Bloody Red Rose
by IusedtobeinWonderland
Summary: Follow Gwen, the younger sister of Sam and Dean as she works to find out what the bloody hell is going on with her family. Follows the show mostly, some OCs and original adventures. Wasn't sure what to rate this, because there's a lot of cursing but no smut and nothing too graphic in terms of violence. I went with T, but if M is more appropriate then please tell me. Thanks!
1. In the Beginning

My family isn't perfect. Okay? I accept that, I acknowledge that. Always has been, and probably always will be. My mother died when I was a baby, and my father, being the batshit crazy asshole that he was, decided to hunt down the thing that killed her. He moved us out of Lawrence, Kansas and raised in motels across the country, never staying in one place longer than a few weeks. He raised us like a drill Sargent. That's an ex Marine for you. And we fought. A _lot_.

Dean was the most accepting of our new lifestyle, even more so than me, and this lifestyle was all I've ever known. But Sammy hated hunting. He wanted to be a normal family who lived in a normal house and who had normal jobs and lives. While I always said what he wanted was boring, I secretly agreed with him. Hunting sucks sometimes. But the thing is, I wasn't vocal about my displeasure and dissatisfaction with the hunting lifestyle. Sam was.

Dad is this real tough, no nonsense kind of guy, and he takes the phrase "My way or the highway" _very_ seriously. He flat out told Sam one time, that if he didn't want the hunter's life, he must not've wanted to avenge Mom. That was his thing. This was all a way to avenge Mom and get back at the thing that killed her. And if you didn't want to be a part of that, you didn't love Mom. Any time Sam asked a question Dad didn't like, or he said some crap about going to school or a museum, Dad was on Sammy's back like stank on shit. This caused a lot of fights, practically every time we went to a new town.

But all that? That was child's play compared to the fight they had when we all found out that Sammy had been accepted to a college in California. The fact that he'd even _applied_ had Dean and Dad pissed enough to not talk to Sam for two days. But then… Then the screaming happened. Every night, for a whole week! Dean and Dad versus Sam. Sam wanted to go to college and lead a normal life, and Dean and Dad wanted him to stay and fulfil his responsibility to Mom.

I tried to stop their screaming at first. It scared me, how angry they all were. I'd never seen them this angry. And they all had this look in their eyes, like they were about to kill each other. They only had that look when they were killing monsters, and it was honestly terrifying to my twelve-year-old self. But when I tried to tell them to stop, they all snarled at me to go to my bed and try to sleep. Of course, motels are generally one room things, so no matter where they were in the apartment, I could here them. I cried myself to sleep every night they fought.

Finally, it all ended. Dean had left the room to go get a drink, and Dad and Sam were just staring at each other near the bathroom. I was worried. They usually didn't stop screaming until the motel person banged on the door telling them to shut up. And this wasn't a peaceful silence. It was an angry silence. Something bad was gonna happen.

"Alright." Dad said, quiet, low, and angry. "You want to go? Go of to college, get a degree, marry a girl, get a house with a white picket fence? The whole deal? Then go! Go, and never come back!"

"Fine." Sam said, and his voice was devoid of emotion. "I will." Sam stood up so forcefully that the chair clattered to the ground. He stormed over to where we kept our bags, grabbed his, and started throwing his things into it. His anger was clear in every move he made, and was etched in to his face.

I sat up, sniffling away the tears, watching for a moment as Sam packed his things. "Sammy?" I finally said. He looked at me, and as soon as he saw my teary face, all the anger washed off of him.

"Yes, Gwen?" He responded, pausing his packing for a second.

"You're coming back, aren't you Sam?" I asked, giving him a wounded puppy dog look. "You won't really leave forever, right? You'll be back by next week, won't you?"

Sam didn't answer for a second, and when he did, I wish he'd stayed silent. Forever. "No, Gwen. I'm not coming back. I have to go." Fresh tears streamed from my eyes as he spoke. "No, Gwen, don't cry. It'll be okay, I promise."

"No it won't!" I yell. "My brother is leaving me and he's not coming back! It won't ever be okay!"

Sam held his arms open for a hug, and I crawled into them like I was a baby, and sobbed into his shoulder. "Shh… Shh, baby. It's okay."

"But I'll miss you…" I whimpered.

"I'll miss you too, Gwen." Sam told me. "But we have each other's numbers. We can call each other. Just because Dad and I are fighting doesn't mean I can't talk to you, alright?"

I sniffled a little and nodded. Sam held me for a few more moments, before letting me go and getting back to packing. Once he was packed, he gave me one last hug, and as he walked out the door, he said to me,

"Remember Gwen, I'll call you."

Guess what he never did?

Once I realized he wasn't going to call me, I did everything in my power to get in contact with him. I called his cell several times, sent him about a million texts, emailed him, everything! But he never responded. After about a year and a half, when I called him, I got a message telling me he'd changed his number. That hurt even worse than him leaving in the first place.

Dean and Dad pretended that he'd never even been there, and told me to just forget about him. And after about two years of crying and pouting over it, I did. I forgot about Sammy, pushed him to the back of my mind, and threw myself into hunting. By that time, I was fourteen, and Dad was beginning to let me go on hunts with him and Dean, even though I spent most of the time in the car, while they went and killed the things.

Until three weeks ago. I'm fifteen now, and Dad sent Dean and I on our own to a hunt in New Orleans. I thought it was stupid to go hunting in a city recently plagued by a hurricane, but we did what Dad said. Once we'd finished the job, we went to call Dad and tell him about it, but we couldn't reach him. He was AWOL. Wouldn't answer the phone, and that was about the only way to reach him.

We're currently on our way to Stanford, where Sam was at college. Dean decided to bring him in on the hunt to find Dad. I'm still epically against that decision, but I'm not the one driving.

"You alright, Gwen?" Dean asks as we drive through the night.

"I'm fine, Dean." I tell him. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"We're about to see our estranged brother that we haven't seen in three or so years." Dean says as if this would be obvious. "And you and him didn't leave on the best of terms."

"We left on perfectly fine terms." I respond. "Sam just went and ruined it."

"And if I recall correctly, you were mad as all hell about that!" Dean says, looking at me. "I need to know you're not gonna rip his ass to shreds once we see him!"

I roll my eyes. "I won't kill him. Or do any sort of bodily harm to him. I got over him not wanting anything to do with me ages ago." Dean gives me a skeptical look. "What? He's gonna treat me like we're not family? Fine. I'll do the same to him."

"So you do hold a grudge?" Dean asks.

"A small one."

"But you still hold one, and I don't want that getting in the way of anything."

"How are _you_ not holding a grudge at him over this?"

"I do, I was just as mad at him as you are! But we need to put that aside so we can find Dad!"

"We can find him on our own!"

"Are you telling me you don't miss him?" Dean asks. "Besides. He owes us."

"I don't miss him, and I plan on never missing him."

"I don't buy that for a second."

"You don't have to."

"Aw, c'mon, Gwen! Play nice! It's all I'm asking!"

"I'm willing to play nice!" I snap at him. "I'm willing to play as nice with him as I would with any stranger."

"But he's not a stranger, he's your brother!"

"He _was_ my brother. He made it clear he wanted nothing to do with me."

"Hey, he never called us either!"

"But he _promised_ he'd call me!" I stress this fact because it is literally the only reason I still hold on to this grudge so much. "A man is only as good as his word, Dean. Dad told us that."

"Well, Dad ain't here right now, is he?"

"No, he's not, so we should be out finding _him_ instead of talking to a man who doesn't want the slightest to do with us!"

"Christ, Gwen, really?! You're just being childish!"

"Oh, really, _I'm_ being childish?" I ask sarcastically. "My reasons for being mad are just as valid as yours are!"

"My reason is that Sam is skipping out on his responsibility to Mom and Dad. What's yours?"

"Sam had a responsibility to this family. He was just as much a part of it as any of us, and he had no right to just drop us like a hot rock just because _you_ couldn't keep all that testosterone in check!"

Dean just groans, and blasts his AC/DC on the radio, signaling the end of the conversation. I look out the window, and pull the blanket up to my chin and try my hardest to fall asleep.

When we reach Sam's apartment, it's three thirty. I haven't slept a wink, but I pretend with all my might that I am so Dean will just leave me be. He sees right through it.

"You wanna come in with me?" he asks. I shake my head. "Figured. I'm gonna grab myself a beer. Be right back with Sammy, okay?" I nod, and get out of the car to go lie down in the back. As I lie down, I stare into the darkness, thinking about nothing. I close my eyes, and think about a tennis ball bouncing back and forth. It calms me, and I'm almost asleep by the time Dean comes back. I hear two voices, and I don't care enough to pay attention to them. I wanna sleep. But I catch a couple of sentences before I go under.

"So how bad has her Winchester temper gotten?" Sam asks.

"Talk to her when she wakes up, and find out for yourself." Dean answers.

"Is it that bad?"

"Well… Yeah. In her mind, you broke some sacred promise, and she plans on holding it against you for the rest of your life."

I hear Sam mumbling his response, but I've already slipped under the surface, into sleep, and I don't catch his words. I sink into the darkness, and don't wake up for what feels like a long, long time.


	2. Jericho 1

When the Impala comes to a stop, I'm jolted awake. I sit up slowly, and look around. We're at a bridge of some kind. Dean and Sam are still in the front seat. Dean is reaching around in the glove compartment for some fake ID.

"Where are we?" I croak. My throat is dry.

"Well, good morning sleeping beauty!" Dean says to me, looking back at me in the rearview mirror. "We're in Jericho, where Dad last was."

"Are we almost at the motel?" I ask.

"We'll head there soon. Right now, we're working on Dad's case, to see if it'll lead us to him." Dean explains. "You stay in the car."

I'm about to protest, because I haven't stayed in the car for a case since I was fourteen, but Sam and Dean both climb out before I can say a thing. I silently fume about this for a couple of moments, before sinking back down into my pillow. I really wish that the impala was more comfortable for sleeping, but we can't have everything, can we? I take out my iPod, and blast my music. I don't even hear my brothers coming back in the car over the booming music of Nirvana's Smells like Teen Spirit.

"So? What's up?" I ask Dean, pulling out my earbuds.

"Victim's name is Troy. He's missing, his car was found on this bridge, but no body. They have _no_ idea how it happened." Dean says, putting the IDs back in the glove compartment.

"This is the case?" I ask. "Sounds like a missing persons."

"Well, it may be, but just to make sure, we're gonna talk to the vic's girlfriend." Sam says to me. I pause before answering for just long enough for it to seem like I'm ignoring him.

"Motel first?" I say eventually.

"I'm sorry Gwen, I know you like to veg and relax, but we need to find Dad!" Dean tries to explain.

"We can't find Dad if we're sleep deprived, and I am _not_ sleeping in this damn car!" I snap.

"Don't talk about baby like that!" Dean says to me as we begin to drive back to town.

"Hey, hey, wait!" Sam butts in, before I could say anything back. "Maybe we should go back to the hotel. Remember what Dad said to do if we ever got separated?" Both of us look at him, waiting for him to get to the point. He rolls his eyes and explains, "Whenever we're separated, go to the first hotel in the phone book. That's how we'll find each other."

Dean looks at Sam, and turns suddenly down a different road. "Sammy that college education is paying off!" looking back at me, he says, "We'll drop you off at the first motel, Gwen, and you'll see if Dad's still there!"

"You think he is?" I ask incredulously.

"Honestly, Gwen, I'll take what I can get." Dean says. "Sammy, find the motel." We pull up at a phone booth. Sam went in, and flipped through the phone book, the phone held to his ear. A couple seconds later, he comes back out.

"Aardvark Motel." Sam says as he climbs back into the car. "Straight that way and take the second left and it should be right there."

Dean floors it, and a couple minutes later we pull up in front of the motel. Now as far as motels go, there are just shades of shitty. Some of them only mildly stink of piss and sweat, only look like they've seen the bad side of one vengeful mistress. And some of them, like the one we're pulling up to now, look like they've survived World War Three and back. I can only imagine how bad this one is going to smell. I'm really sensitive to smells. It triggers my gag reflex.

Dean hands me his credit card. "The name is Aframian. This is your brother's credit card." I nod, and get out of the car, grabbing my backpack and my bag. Within these two bags is literally everything I own.

I walk to the lobby, shouldering my bags. The bells jingle as I walk in, and the man behind the desk looks up at me. "Can I help you?" he says.

"Yeah I need a room for a couple days. Two queens." I tell him, taking out my brother's card from my pocket.

"Two beds for one little girl?" the man asks, taking the card, but he doesn't swipe it. "And aren't you a little young to be having a credit card?"

"Yes sir, it's my brother's card." I explain. "My two brothers are out at the car getting our things."

"Ah, well alright then." The man says, swiping it. "Hey, are you guys having a little family reunion?"

"Uh, yeah, why?" I say, rolling with it, my hopes rising. Was Dad checked in? Was he here?

"Burt Aframian checked in a couple weeks ago. Has the place out for a whole month." The clerk says, handing my card back to me.

"Is Uncle Burt here already?" I ask, using my doe eyes. "Can you tell me his room please so I can surprise him?"

The clerk laughed a little. "Sure missy. 118. Your room is 109."

"Thank you, sir!" I chirp, pocketing the card and literally skipping down the hall to my room. I unlock it, dump my bags down on what is now my bed, and lock the door behind me as I walk down to room 118.

I knock on the door expectantly, but there's no reply. I try the door, and it opens. It must've been left unlocked.

"Dad?" I call as I walk in, but there's no one inside. But Dad has obviously been here. Papers and notes cover the wall, bits of string connect different pieces of paper, and Dad's messy scrawl covers every page.

I reach into the back pocket for my phone, before remembering that Dean is going to be talking to a girl. He doesn't need me telling him about something like this when I don't know more and when he's trying to flirt. I sigh as I come to the realization that I'll have to actually read and do research.

Don't get me wrong, I love reading. My backpack is filled entirely with my favorite books to read. But there's a difference between reading for fun and reading for the job. Reading for the job is just painful to sit through. Most of the texts are so old you have to use a dictionary for every word, and those that aren't are usually written by whackos. Or, like right now, they're hand written, and that person usually has _horrendous_ handwriting.

Taking a deep breath, I begin looking through Dad's papers. I start with one that seems to be the start of a chain of strings. It's a news paper clipping.

Young Man Missing on Centennial Highway

The clipping reads. The string leads to another article with a similar title, and again, and again, and again, all across the wall, until I reach the far wall. This wall is split into two parts, one part about a girl named Constance, and one part about different types of supernatural creatures. Circled is a page that says, "woman in white".

I start on the side about the girl named Constance. She committed suicide in 1981, supposedly after her children died in the bathtub. She left behind a husband, and on another page I find the husband's address. There's not much else on this side about her. On the other side, I go straight to the page that says Woman in White. I have only a vague idea of what that is. Dad only has the one circled sheet that mentioned a Woman in White, so I break out my laptop and start digging.

My eyes are about to fall out from so much reading by the time Dean calls me.

"Hey, Gwen, guess what we found?"

"Guess what I found." I say. "I'm in Dad's room in the motel. He's not here, but he left behind all his work. We're dealing with a Woman in White. They're vengeful spirits who go after men who've cheated on their girlfriends or wives."

"Yeah? We were at the library. We find out about this girl called Constance Welch. She kills her kids and then commits suicide by jumping off the bridge." Dean says.

"I'm guessing she killed her kids after she found out her husband was cheating then." I say.

Suddenly I hear Sam's voice. "Do you have the husband's address? Or where Constance is buried?"

I feel my face stiffen when I hear his voice. "Husband lives at 343 Kondike. Constance is buried in the only cemetery in town."

Back to Dean. "Alright, Gwen, we're gonna go see Constance's grave, see if Dad got so far as salting and burning. Then we'll come by and pick you up. We'll check out the bridge again without any cops, and we'll head to visit the husband after."

"Oh, I'm allowed to go places now?" I ask pointedly. "Or am I gonna be sitting in the goddamn car again like a pathetic ten-year-old?"

"Dammit, Gwen, don't start this again!" Dean growls. "You know it's hard to pass off as police or Feds if I have a short, young looking girl following me around!"

"According to the guy in the room across from us, I don't look _too_ young!" I say, totally making it up. But Dean doesn't need to know that.

"You mess around with any guy, and I'll shoot his nuts off. Got it?"

"Sir yes Sir!" I say, hanging up. I'm angry now, and I have no idea why. I don't know why I brought up being made to stay in the car earlier, and I hadn't even realized I was so mad about it until I said it. I sigh, close my laptop, and start walking back to our room. Once inside, I drop my laptop on the table in the kitchen area, and collapse on the bed. Goddammit, life was confusing as all hell sometimes.

I stare at the ceiling until boredom threatens to make me rip out my brains. I reach into my backpack, and pull out _El mapa del tiempo_ , one of my favorite books, open it to my bookmark, and begin to read. I love reading, because in books, I know that the things I read about can't hurt me, unlike the monsters I faced day to day in real life. This particular book I've been dying to get to, but I can't start one series while I'm still reading another, I just can't. So I had to wait while I read through all ten books in the last series I read. But now… Time travel, Victorian era London, hoaxes and romance… This is the kinda crap I love to read about.

For one, I love history. For two, I'm a teenage girl, and hot Victorian English gentlemen seriously do it for me, though I'm ashamed to admit it. If Dean ever finds this book, I'll have to _Obliviate_ his memory, Harry Potter style. Another book series I loved. I'm a sucker for time travel and romance. Probably why I love Doctor Who, now that I think about it.

As I read, everything else falls away, and I'm sucked into the world of Victorian London, watching from above as the main character, Jacob Realy, works to get back his lover by going back in time seven years. As it turns out, this is all a scam, a trick to get Jacob out of his funk that he'd fallen into after his lover died.

I'm just about to turn the page to the next part of the story, wondering where the story could possibly go from here, since they had a very serviceable beginning, middle, and end, when my phone rings. My ringtone, to my brother's eternal annoyance, is "Yeah" by Usher. My brothers and my father are all fans of classic rock and roll, and they absolutely _hate_ that my ringtone is a "modern Pop &B piece of garbage."

"Hello?" I say, accepting the call and holding the phone to my ear.

"What room are you in?" Dean asks.

"I'm in room 109. Dad's room is 118." I answer. "Should I be heading out to the lobby?"

"Yeah, sure, but I want to take a look at Dad's room."

"Nothing's there Dean. No sign of him. All his stuff was gone, only the papers on the wall."

"Well then I wanna see these papers on the wall!" Dean snaps. "Maybe they tell us more about where he is, or what we're dealing with!"

"Dean, we know what we're dealing with! A Woman in White!"

"Yeah, well Women in White are vengeful spirits, which means they're attached to their remains. And Dad already salted and burned this one's remains, so there must be something that you missed!"

"Oh, so now you're blaming me?" I shout, before I remember there are other people here.

"No, Gwen, I'm not blaming you! But this woman is still around, so there must be something else!"

"Jesus Christ and God Almighty!" I throw my hands up in defeat. "Fine, go to the room, tear it apart, but you won't find anything that I didn't. I'll be waiting for you in the Impala." I snap my phone shut, angry all over again. I shove my book into my backpack, and grab a gun and a knife, like I always do whenever I leave the motels. I put the gun in the waistband of my jeans, and put the knife in my boots.

Right now I'm just wearing a red flannel shirt and jeans so torn they're basically patched patches, and Timberland work boots. My knife is well hidden by my jeans, but my gun sticks out like a sore thumb. To fix this, I grab a red varsity jacket from my clothes back, and it makes the gun stick out a little less.

Once I'm sufficiently armed and disguised, I walk out of the motel room and out to the lobby. In the lobby, I see Sam, standing there looking pitiful, and no Dean. I don't want to deal with either of them right now, so I just blow right past him to the Impala. I yank on the handle to open the door, and it stays shut. I yank on it again, determined to break the damn lock just to get back at Dean.

"You won't be getting in anytime soon. Not until I unlock it." Sam says from behind me, jingling the keys.

"Unlock it, Sam." I tell him.

"Not until you and me talk."

"Talk about what, Sam?" I ask, still not turning around to face him. "As I recall, you've had four _fucking_ years to pick up the phone and 'talk'! But did you ever call me, or answer one of mine? Nope! You didn't! Not _once_!"

"Look," Sam says, "I'm sorry I didn't call you like I said, but –''

"No, you didn't 'say' that you were gonna call, you _promised_!" I say to him. "And you _never_ did!"

"Gwen, please, hear me out, okay? I have a reason."

"Oh, you have a _reason_? You have a reason that somehow justifies ignoring your sister for _years_ , when you mother fucking promised that you'd keep in touch? You have a reason for changing your number so I couldn't reach you?" I snarl, letting every bit of poison and venom I could seep into my words. I'm tapping into a grudge that I'd kept under lock and key for years, and all that anger that'd been kept there has had plenty of time to fester.

"Gwen! Watch your mouth with me, missy!"

"Oh, don't you 'missy' me! I'll fucking curse at you all I fucking want, because you're just a shitty, shitty, asshole of a person! You're not even my brother anymore, not that you ever wanted to be!"

Suddenly Sam grabs me by the shoulder and spins me around, holding me against the Impala while he glares at me. "Listen here. Hate to burst your bubble, Gwen, but I never promised you anything! You wanna know why I never called you? Because you were a part of the life I wanted to forget! I wanted to call you, I really did, but then you'd try and get me to come back, and I'd be sucked back in again! I _hate_ hunting, and I never, _ever_ wanted to go back to it!"

I'm about to cry, but I refuse to. I will _not_ give him that satisfaction. Sam continues, "I'm sorry I hurt your feelings so bad, but I never thought you'd hold onto them like this! It's just not healthy, Gwen!"

"Really?" I ask, and I make my voice quiver a little bit just to make him feel guilty. "You thought I _wouldn't_ hold a grudge? Then not only are you an ass, you're also an idiot." I shake his grip off. "Unlock the door, Sam."

"Gwen, please!" Sam pleads with me. "Just let go of the anger! I'm not saying forgive me, or anything like that, I'm just saying _please_ , stop being so mad at me! It's not healthy!"

"Unlock the door."

"Gwen…"

"Sam, I'm telling you, unlock the damn door."

"Please, just promise me you'll let go of the anger?"

"No. Unlock the door."

"Gwen… C'mon…" Sam looks crushed, but I don't care at this point. I grab the keys from Sam's hands, and unlock the door to the Impala. I slide into the shotgun, and slam the door behind me, plugging in my earphones and blasting my music. It's still set on Smells Like Teen Spirit, and I change the song to Lose Yourself by Eminem. I close my eyes, and ignore everything. I'm only aware that we've started towards the bridge once the car starts moving.

I feel a tap on my shoulder. I pull out one headphone, but don't look at Dean.

"So did you and Sam talk it out?" he asks.

"Did you and Sam arrange for me and him to be alone together so we could, you know, talk it out and kiss and make up?" I ask back. "Because it didn't work."

Dean sighed, and remained silent. The whole ride was just silence. Angry silence, awkward silence, and mean silence. We're silent the whole way to the bridge. By the time we get there, darkness is just about to take full hold. The day is almost over, but it feels like it's only been a few hours since I woke up this morning. Dean parks the car at the edge of the road near the bridge where Constance jumped to her death, and we all pile out. I intend to just leave my headphones in, but Dean yanks them out of my ears once he sees them.

"We're on a case." He says. "Grow the hell up and act like it." I roll my eyes and put my earphones back in the car. The three of us walk down the bridge in the fading light, stopping to look over the edge.

"So this is where Constance took her swan dive." Dean says, shining a flashlight down onto the muddy river below.

"You think Dad would've been here?" Sam asks, looking at Dean right over my head. Both of my brothers are six foot plus, and little old me down here isn't even a full five feet. Yet. I'm almost there, just two more inches.

"Well, he's chasing the same story, and we're chasing him." Dean answers, flicking off the light. He keeps walking down the bridge, and Sam and I follow.

"Okay, well, we're here. So now what? What're we looking for?" Sam asks.

"We're looking for Dad." Dean says. "And we're gonna keep looking until we find him. No matter how long it takes."

"Dean, I have to be back by Monday." Sam points out. I sigh and roll my eyes. I know where this is going.

"Oh, yes, Monday… For the interview…" Dean says. "Yeah I forgot, you're really serious about this crap, aren't you? Gonna become a lawyer, and marry your girl? Jessica?" And just like that Dean was angry, and I knew this wasn't going to end well.

"Yeah, Dean, maybe I am. Why not?" says Sam.

"Well, how well does she really know you, Sam? Does she know the things you've done?"

Sam pushes me gently out of the way, and glares at Dean. "No, and she's never _going_ to know."

"You sure that's healthy, Sammy?" Dean asks. I'm getting ready to push myself in between them and make them stop, because the both of them have always been prone to physical altercations, even before Sam left. "Sooner or later, Sammy, you'll have to face up to who you really are."

"Oh, yeah?" Sam says, "And who's that?"

"You're one of us." Dean says. Sam takes two steps forward so he's as close to being nose to nose as he can with Dean. Don't get me wrong, Dean's pretty tall too, but Sammy's taller. They're both getting that look in their eyes again, and I look around nervously. I see something flicker in the corner of my eye, but when I turn my head to look, it's gone. I keep one eye on it just to be sure, but I keep the rest of my focus on my brothers. Last thing I need is for one of them to push the other over the edge.

"No, I'm not like you!" Sam protests. "This is _not_ my life!"

"Who you tryna convince, Sammy?" Dean asks. "You have a responsibility to –''

"To who?!" Sammy asks angrily. I see something again, and when I look, I see a young woman in a white dress. I get a sinking feeling in my stomach as I keep looking at her. "To Mom? To Dad? To Dad and his, his crusade? Dean, I barely remember that Mom was a blonde, and if it weren't for the stories you and Dad told, I would have no idea what she was like!" The woman steps up to the side of the bridge, and looks me in the eyes. Right at me.

"Sam. Dean." I say, trying to get their attention, but of course they ignore me completely.

"And, Dean, even if I did remember, what difference would it make? Even if we find the thing that killed her, it's not gonna bring her back! Mom's gone. She's dead, and she's never coming back to us, no matter what we do." Sam says. Dean grabs Sam and pushes him up against the railing. The woman is still looking at me.

"Don't you _dare_ talk about her like that." Dean says lowly. The woman looks away, and is about to jump.

"Dean!" I shout, grabbing his arm and yanking him away from Sam. "Look!" He turns his head to look just as Constance jumps.

"Sam, c'mon." Dean says, and we all start running towards where she jumped. Dean reached it first, skidding to a halt and looking over the edge. When I join him, I can't see anything, even with Dean's flashlight.

"Where'd she go?" I ask, looking around for her.

"No clue." Sam says, before we all hear the familiar roar of the Impala's engine. I whirl around to see the car's lights shining in my eyes, getting bigger as it comes barreling closer to us.

I turn around and start running instantly, with Sam and Dean just behind me. But the car is faster than us, and just as it's about to hit us, we all dive over the side of the bridge. I grip as tight as I can to the railing, and I see Sam doing the same in my peripheral vision, but I don't see Dean anywhere. Then I hear the splash of water, and know that he overshot when he dove.

I see the lights of the car as they zoom past us, and stop at the edge of the bridge. I wait for what feels like ages, no one speaking, to see if the danger has passed us for the moment. Once it's been silent for a couple of minutes, Sam asks,

"All good?"

In answer, Dean spits out water and yells,

"I swear if that bitch wrecked my car!"

"Alright, Dean's okay. What about you, Gwen?" Sam asks, and I turn to look at him in the darkness.

"I'm good." I say, smiling at him. He smiles back, and swings himself back up onto the bridge. He extends a hand to me to help me up.

"Glad to hear it." He says.

We look over the railing, down at Dean, who's crawling out of the river all muddy. I can't help but laugh a little.

"Yeah, yeah, Gwen, laugh all you fucking want," Dean breaks into a fit of coughs, "But just you wait, you'll regret it!" More coughing, and I let out another laugh.

"That's some big talk from someone who's too busy coughing up mud to finish a sentence!" Sam calls down to our brother, laughing as well.

Dean takes a deep breath, and stands up on the muddy bank. "I will murder both of you in your sleep!"

"And when you find Dad, you can explain to him how two of his children suddenly wound up dead!" I taunted him, walking towards the Impala. "On the bright side, looks like baby is okay."

"She'd better be!" Dean hollered as he trudged up the hill back to the road. He emerged sopping wet and his hands and knees were muddy. He walks to the driver's door, and is about to open it when Sam says,

"You sure you wanna drive baby when you're soaking wet?"

Dean considers this for a moment, before turning for the trunk and taking out a blanket. He draped it over the backseat, and sat down on it. "Don't you dare wreck my car…" He mumbled.


	3. Jericho 2

Oh boy… Someone needs to tell me if this is too long, because it feels like it is. Critiques are always welcome!

Before we get too far into this story, I'm in college full time, and a lot of the time my only free time to write is on the weekends. So this story might be a bit slow to update. So I appreciate your patience! Enjoy!

Also, blah blah blah, no copyright infringement intended, blah blah blah, fair use, blah blah blah, don't sue me.

As we drove back to the motel, the atmosphere was much more friendly than previously. We were all kinda giddy as a result of the adrenaline, and despite the fact that we'd been angry at each other prior to the car trying to run us over, we were being more than amicable to each other now. I was still sorta angry at Sam, now that I'm thinking about it, but it didn't seem to matter too much now. I would probably bring it up again later, but for now it didn't seem as important.

"So we obviously can't visit the husband now." Dean giggles in the backseat.

"Yeah, doubt he'd appreciate being bothered by a bunch of kids who look like they've been swimming with their clothes on!" I say.

"Well, only one of us looks like that." Sam points out cheekily, grinning at Dean in the rearview mirror. Dean rolls his eyes.

"So we'll have to visit the husband tomorrow." Dean says, getting the conversation back on track. Sam nods, and makes a left back into town towards the motel.

"Do we have to?" I ask. "I mean, Dad's basically already told us that Constance is a Woman in White, which means her husband must've cheated on her. What more do we need from him?"

"Dad's also already salted and burned the bones." Sam says. "So there must be something else keeping Constance here. Maybe she hasn't punished her husband yet?"

"Don't you think that would be the first thing she'd do? Go after the man who cheated on _her_ , and _drove_ her to kill herself?" I ask. "Makes most sense to me."

"She killed herself when her kids died." Dean says.

"Spirits also don't see things the way we do." Sam adds. "Anyway, there must be something else keeping Constance here, and maybe the husband knows what it is." As he says this, he pulls into the motel parking lot. "Dean, you get to shower first, so you get mud over as little as possible." Dean does a fist bump at getting first shower, an honor that usually goes to me. Mostly because even though I'm the only girl, I take the quickest showers. Short hair like mine requires less maintenance in the shower, face wash and body wash only take a minute or two each, and most showers that's all I need, and I'm out in less than five. It's when I shave that I take the longest, but even then, I'm quicker than any of the men of my family.

Once inside the motel, a headache immediately descends. This is a common occurrence for me, since the change from fresh outside air to the stale and dingy air in the motels is often a very drastic and jarring change. Not pleasant. When we get to our motel room, Sam breaks out the air fresheners and I break out the pain killers while Dean heads to the shower. Four hundred milligrams of Advil and several sprays of Febreze later, the room smelled of flowers and sunshine, and my headache was diminishing. Dean was singing in the shower, making an effort to be quiet for our neighbor's sake, and singing way off key. It sounded only mildly terrible. Imagine how painful being in the car with him for hours on end was. I swear he only listened to four albums total.

While Dean showered, I got my pajamas out to change into when I was done showering. I collapse onto my bed, right in the middle, and all my energy sinks right out of me down into the sheets. I don't even know if I'll manage to get up to go to the shower.

"Uh, Gwen?" Sam says, and by his tone I know we were going to continue our earlier conversation outside the Impala. And I'm having such a good time ignoring that, and pretending that Sam never left and that this was just another case.

"No, Sam, I don't want to talk about this." I tell him.

"Well, suck an egg, 'cause we're talking about it." Sam says. I groan, but he just continues on. "Gwen, honey, please! It's not healthy!"

"So you keep saying."

"Drop the attitude."

"Make me."

"Gwen."

"Yes, Sam?"

"You're avoiding the subject."

"What subject?"

"You being mad at me. And how it's not healthy."

"Hmm… Why am I mad at you again?" I ask, pretending to think for a moment. "Oh, right, because my own brother ignored me for _years_ on end! Do you realize how much that hurt?"

"Gwen, I told you, I wanted to forget!"

"Oh, because being told that my brother wanted to _forget_ me instead of just ignore me felt _so_ much better!"

Sam blinked and nodded his head in agreement. "Alright, maybe that was harsh. But you needed to hear it! I had to tell you, so you wouldn't be mad anymore."

"Really? You think that telling me that _wouldn't_ make me mad?"

"Gwen, c'mon! Being as angry as you were over something that happened _years_ ago simply is _not_ normal!"

"Like anything about us is normal!"

"Not healthy then! Gwen, that level of anger is only gonna lead to heart disease and high blood pressure."

"Then at least the vampires won't wanna bite me."

"Gwen… Be serious." Sam says.

"Be serious." I mock him, lowering my voice like his and slurring the words like an idiot.

"Gwen!" Sam snaps. "I just want to apologize for hurting your feelings, and hopefully get you to stop being so mad! Can you _please_ let me do that?"

"No, Sam, you can't, because why does it matter? You're leaving after we find Dad, and you'll go back to ignoring – no, wait, excuse me, _forgetting_ about me, so what does it matter if I'm still mad at you when you leave?"

"I can't live with myself knowing you're this mad at me!"

"Just go back to forgetting about me, and it won't matter! You were doing a damn good job at it for the past three or four years!"

"Hell, Gwen, can't you let a man be sorry?"

"Don't think so, no." I respond snappishly. Sam throws his hands up in the air, and storms over to the other bed just as Dean shuts off the water. I grab my pajamas and a towel from the closet, and as soon as Dean opens the door, I'm worming my way past him into the bathroom.

"What's her problem?" I hear Dean ask as I slam the door behind me.

"Don't ask me." Sam responds.

I turn the water on as hot as it will go, which for a motel like this, honestly isn't that hot. Not hot enough for it to be of any use in calming me down. I stand under the lukewarm water, not really thinking, just staring into space. It hurts to think of how much Sam and I are fighting after less than twenty-four hours together, when before he left we'd been nearly inseparable, since he was usually left home to look after me.

Sammy was seven years older than me, old enough to remember Mom, though he claims not to remember much. He was the one who taught me how to read and write, math, and told me stories about World War II, which was my favorite war to learn about. Dad really didn't care much about my education beyond that I knew how to read sufficiently enough to help with cases when I was old enough. It was Sam that got me hooked on reading and writing for fun.

When Sam and I were left alone in the motels, he'd leave me alone for a couple minutes to go get children's books from wherever he could find them for me to read. I soon outgrew those, so he took to "borrowing" books from the local bookstores for me to read. We hid them from Dad, because he'd just make us get rid of them. But Sam would read with me, and that's what kept me calm when Dad and Dean weren't there. I scared real easy when I was little, see, so when Dad wasn't there I was even jumpier than usual. But reading made it all better.

He and I were best friends… and now… we're not. And it bothers me, no matter how mad I am at him right now. It just bothers me, the whole thing. I'm not usually like this either. Don't get me wrong, I have as much of a Winchester temper as my father or Dean, and in some cases Sam, too. I'm perfectly capable of getting fearsomely angry. But usually, it's not like this. It's like adding gasoline to a fire. I get really really angry for a brief period, usually only a couple of minutes, and then I go back to normal pretty quickly. Since Dad is gone, since Sam's back, it's been like every little thing has set me off, and I'm never calm.

My thoughts are interrupted by Dean banging on the door.

"Gwen! C'mon, don't use up _all_ the water!" He hollers at me. I blink, startled, and find myself leaning against the shower wall, the filthy, disease ridden wall. I shudder, and call back,

"Just a couple more minutes!" Then, I hurriedly scrub my arm and shoulder that was against the wall, before turning the water off.

I quickly dry my short blonde hair, and swipe the towel over my body to get rid of the little water droplets. I look in the mirror, which isn't even close to fogging up, and wonder how much I really do look like Mom. I've seen the pictures. She and I have the same shade of blonde hair, but that's where the similarities seem to end. Dad always said that I looked like Mom, but I have no idea how he came to that conclusion besides that we share the same hair color. Maybe he meant personality?

I pull on my pajamas, a pair of pink cotton shorts and a pink quarter sleep top with a heart and two penguins on it. I allow myself to look myself over once, imagining what I would look like with proper makeup. I'm not a particularly vain person, and given how I spend most of my time on the road or in motels, it would be difficult to carry around a huge bag of makeup. I usually get away with just a little eyeliner and lip gloss. But I always like to imagine myself looking like the movie stars, like I just popped out of my mother with perfect blush, high heels, manicured nails, and perfect hair. Like my mother.

I open the bathroom door, and see Sam pouting on his bed.

"Did you save me _any_ hot water?" he asks, looking like a put upon little kid.

"Going to college must've spoiled you, Sammy!" I say cheerily, but with bite. The saying 'My bark is worse than my bite' doesn't apply to me. It's easy to get under my skin and get through to me than it is to listen to me berate you. "You actually think a motel like this has warm water?"

He gives me a withering glare, and grabs a towel and a pair of boxers. Oh, right, I forgot, Sam slept in his underwear. This'll be fun. Dean usually at least sleeps in a pair of shorts, too, if not a plain white tee shirt. Dad never seemed to take his shirt off unless he was injured. Combined, I've been relatively spoiled by my lack of seeing my male family members strutting around in their boxer briefs. I blush at the thought of Sam in just his boxers, and repress a shudder. Awkward.

Sam steps towards the bathroom door, but Dean stops him. "Hold 'em, cowboy. Before you go shower, we all need to talk about something."

"What, Dean?" I ask, plopping down on my bed.

"The sleeping situation." Dean explains. "When Sam was gone, Gwen and I each got a bed to ourselves, and when we were with Dad, either Dad or I took the couch, if there was one, or one of us slept with Gwen. What are we gonna do?"

"One of you can take the couch." I say, holding onto my pillows and blankets protectively. I _hate_ sharing beds. They always ended up taking all the blankets, and then I'd be cold all night!

Dean rolls his eyes. "I knew you'd say that. But unfortunately Gwen, there doesn't appear to be a couch here." He smirks at me, and I realize he's right. I scowl at the thought of having to share the bed. "Don't worry, Gwen, we won't take all the sheets."

"Can't you two share a bed?" I whine, preparing to use my Bambi eyes, should it be needed. Dean can never resist my Bambi eyes. "You did when we were kids!"

"Yeah, when we were kids, Gwen!" Sam protested. "We're men now."

"Oh, really, Sammy?" I ask sweetly, "You had me fooled." Another glare pierces my skin to my very soul.

"Anyway..." Dean says. "We're not gonna share a bed with each other, so one of us is gonna share a bed with you."

I bring out the Bambi eyes, and put my hands together like I'm begging. " _Please_ , Dean? I don't wanna share a bed!"

Dean looks like he was about to give in, but damn Sam! He speaks up just before Dean could. "I'll share with Gwen, Dean." Dean blinks, and looks relieved that the decision had been made and he was spared of my Bambi eyes.

I pout epically. "Well if you and I are sharing, you're wearing more than just your boxers."

Sam groans, but grabs a pair of sweat shorts from his bag before going into the bathroom to shower. I curl up under the blankets, making sure a good portion of them are already over on my side so I can at least be warm when he pulls them over. I try to fall asleep, but I can't help thinking that something's wrong, like I'm missing something. That's when I realize I don't have my teddy bear, Blu-Bear, anymore. I left him in a motel about six months ago, on accident. I've had him as long as I can remember, and I hate sleeping without him. I would've asked Dean or Dad to buy me a new one, but it wouldn't be the same, and besides, when I lost Blu-Bear, Dad said I was too old for teddies anyway. He'd never let me get another one.

I pout, and feel myself slipping into my usual nighttime depression. Every night, like clockwork, I just get so sad and tired, but no matter how hard I try or how tired I am, I can't sleep for hours. I don't cry, I just wallow in my own self pity. Think about how pathetic my life is.

I'm the middle point between Sam and Dean. Sam utterly loathes hunting and our family, hates our life, and longs to be normal. Sam acted on his hatred for this life, and _became_ as normal as he possibly could. Then there's Dean. Dean loves hunting, he loves being different, he loves knowing, seeing, and doing things that other people couldn't even dream of. He's always sided with Dad, no matter what. He's always loathed the normality and boredom that being normal seemed to entail.

And then… There's me. I like hunting, it can be fun, and with childish glee I love being in on a secret no one else gets to know about. But at the same time… Boy did I hate being different. No friends, no school, no dating, no hobbies like playing piano or painting or whatever, no eagerly counting down the days until I have enough allowance money to buy a new pair of jeans or a phone…

I guess that's why I like reading so much. When I read, I can become normal, or at least live vicariously through the characters in the stories. I can go to school, have friends, be normal…

At the end of the night though, just before I finally fall asleep after contemplating all this and what specifically makes my life more pitiful than the rest of my family's, is that I didn't go with Sam. I didn't leave, I didn't try to experience what I so longed to be. They say that you'll regret what you didn't try more than what you did…

Thing is though, as soon as I wake up, I'm fine. I'm not depressed, I'm not sad, I don't feel the way I did the night before.

I barely notice when Sam slides into bed next to me. He keeps just about the whole bed in between us, and barely takes an inch of blanket from me. I'm too busy thinking and wallowing and talking with myself to say anything to him, not that I wanted to.

"G'night, Gwen." Sam says, and goes still. I stay still, even out my breathing, pretending to be asleep. I've perfected this art years ago. Dean doesn't even notice that I'm awake anymore, and neither does Dad, when he's here.

Unfortunately, Sam noticed. It was a few hours later. I'd been watching the clock, watching as the numbers changed, imagining what my life would be like if I was just here on vacation, if I was doing some cross country road trip, and this was the last stop. Tears were brimming in my eyes, but I wasn't really sad enough to cry, just numb. Numb and desperate.

It's almost 2:30 when Sam whispers into the dark,

"Gwen, are you up?"

I take a deep breath before I whisper back, "Yeah."

"Why can't you sleep?"

I don't know how to answer that question, so I just stay quiet.

"Gwen?" Sam asks again.

"Sam, I don't know what to do anymore…" I say in a teary voice.

"What do you mean?"

"Sam, I just…" and the tears drip down. Since I'm on my side they just make the pillow wet.

"You just what?" Sam says, scooting closer to me on the bed. I roll over and hug him in the darkness, thankful he can't see my face. "You just what, Gwen?"

"I don't want to do hunting, I wanna be normal like you! I want friends and a boyfriend and to go to school and play piano or the violin! I wanna go shopping with my friends and gossip and joke around!" I whine as my tears dampen his chest. My chest heaves as I try to hold in the sobs, and I cling to Sam like I used to when we were younger. "I want my teddy bear back, but I can't have him back because I lost him and I feel guilty over that because now no one's gonna take care of him, and I just don't know what to do because Dad's gone AWOL, and soon you'll be gone again too, and it'll be just me and Dean, and what if Dean leaves me too, 'cause I don't wanna be alone!" I hate myself so much right now. This is literally the most childish I've _ever_ acted, even when I _was_ a child. I was never a crier, only for the first like two years of my existence. After that, I only cried when I was seriously hurt. And I've never been this pathetic!

"Whoa, whoa, Gwen! Shh… Shh… it's okay…" Sam whispers in my ear as I cry into his chest. "Gwen, it's okay…"

"No it's not!" I sob.

"Yes, it is, Gwen, it'll be okay. You know how I know?" Sam asks me.

"How?"

"Because I can fix at least part of what's making you like this."

"How?" I ask again.

"Well, for starters, I promise that when I leave again to go back to Stanford, I'll call you. As often as we can, okay?" Sam says, rubbing my back like he did when we were younger. "As for your teddy bear… Why don't we get you a new one?"

"It won't be the same…" I mutter.

"No, a new teddy won't be the same as – what was his name? Blu?"

"Blu-Bear."

"A new teddy won't be the same as Blu-Bear, but you can take care of a new teddy who doesn't have anyone to love him. I think Blu-Bear would like that for you." Sam says. He's talking to me like I'm a child, which for the moment, I am. I so _very_ rarely act like this, so it's nice to be treated like I want to be treated when I do. It's nice to be comforted and to feel like someone else can take the wheel for a moment.

I nod into Sam's chest, and raise a hand to wipe my tears. "Thanks, Sam."

"No problem, Gwen." He whispers, kissing my forehead. "Now c'mon, we got a teddy bear to buy."

"What?" I ask. "We're going now?"

"Yeah. You wanna explain to Dean in the morning why we're going to buy a teddy?"

I nod, "Good point. Let me throw on some sweats."

Sam and I climb out of bed as quietly as possible. Sam throws on a shirt, and I pull on some sweatpants over my shorts. The pair of us grab a key, and lock the door behind us as we make our way to the impala. Sam throws an arm around me, and guides me to the car. The air is cool on my bare skin, and the handle of the impala is damp with morning dew, even though the sun won't be up for hours.

"Let's go find ourselves a gift store!" Sam says as he starts the car. He pulls out of the motel parking lot, and begins to drive towards the main part of town. We pass by a bar and a liquor store first before we find a closed Starbucks, a closed Hallmark, and a 24-hour convenience store. A quick look through the window reveals, however, that it only houses food, painkillers, and milk in the back. We've driven through almost the entirety of what constitutes as the main part of the town before we find a small store on a corner. Its lights are on, and inside are rows and rows of binkies, bibs, and baby formula.

"Do you wanna try it?" Sam asks me, slowing down as we approach it.

"A baby store?" I raise an eyebrow skeptically.

"Hey, babies love stuffed animals too!" Sam protests, pulling over. "We'll at least check it out. If not, I'll find you one in Stanford before you leave. Promise."

"Alright…" I say, getting out of the car. Sam and I walk side by side to the door, and Sam holds it open for me when I walk in. Bells jingle above my head, and a frail elderly woman approaches us from the back of the store.

She gives us a once over, and her eyes frowned in disapproval for a brief moment. Then, she was all smiles and niceness. "Oh, hello! Is this your first baby, dear? Or do you need some other services?" she gestures vaguely to a section of a shelf at the back of the store, which, now that I noticed, was filled with condoms, Plan B, and fliers for Planned Parenthood.

A blush covers my face, and for once I have nothing to say to this woman, as the only things I have to say are rude and snippy, and I try to be polite to the elderly. Thank God for Sam, who says kindly to the lady,

"No, Ma'am, we were actually looking for a gift for our niece. We're just passing through here on our way to San Francisco for our niece's birthday, and we needed a gift." He blinks and looks down bashfully, "When we left it was really early, and we forgot to check for the gift we already got her. So now we need a new one."

The lady smiles and chuckles at Sam's story. Damn, he was almost as good at Dean at pulling wool over women's eyes. Maybe college has done him some good.

"Oh, well, of course, dear, such things happen sometimes." The lady says. "How old is your niece?"

"She's turning four…" Sam says anxiously. "You have a stuffed animal for her?"

"Yes," the lady says, turning around and gesturing for us to follow her, "I do think I have something suitable for a girl that age." She leads us to an aisle on the far right hand side of the store, where a variety of stuffed animals and soft blankets are on display. "Here you are dear."

"Thank you, Ma'am." Sam says, smiling at the lady. She nods, and walks away to the register.

"I'll be right here if you need anything else!" She calls over her shoulder.

I look over the assortment of teddies. Most of the ones that're clearly for girls have pink fluffy tutus and tiaras. Blah. I'm not that girly, I mean, how can I be, I kill monsters for a living. And I would rather die a thousand times over than let Dean see me cuddling a ballerina teddy bear in the morning. The teddies that were more appealing to me were the boy's ones. They were more plain. Most of them were either brown, black, or white, sometimes with bow ties and sometimes with little jackets on them.

"See any one you like?" Sam asks. My eyes zero in on one sitting next to a ballerina one. It's light brown, fluffy like one of those labradoodles, has a big, cute nose, and a blue ribbon tied in a bow around his neck.

"This one." I say, grabbing him and holding him to my chest.

"Alright then, let's buy it." Sam says, fishing his wallet out of his back pocket and walking towards the register.

"Find what you were looking for?" The lady asks, taking the bear from me and scanning a tag attached to his ribbon.

"Yes, thank you." Sam says.

"Would you like him boxed?" she asks, reaching under the counter to grab one as if we'd already answered.

"No thanks, Ma'am." I say. "We'll be good."

"Oh, well alright, dear." She says, taking Sam's credit card and swiping it. "Have a nice rest of your trip!"

"We will, thank you!" Sam says, taking the teddy bear and leading me back out to the impala. Once we were both situated in the car, he smiles at me, and says, "Well, how's that?" He hands me the teddy, and I hug him tight.

"He's perfect." I say, kissing him on the nose. "Thanks again, Sam."

"No problem." Sam says, starting the car again. "So, are we good?"

I wonder for a brief second of the meaning of his words. He could be asking me if I was better now and ready to fall asleep, or he could be asking me if I'd forgiven him. In both cases, I answered, "Yes."

The ride back to the motel was comfortably quiet, but to be honest I don't remember much. I was half asleep for most of it. I remember a brief moment of clarity where I found myself back in the motel in my bed, but then it was gone, and I was back to sleep. It was a good sleep, better than any I'd gotten in months.

When I wake up, Sam is shaking my shoulder and whispering in my ear, "Gwen! _Gwen_! Get _up_!"

I'm instantly awake. What happened, who's hurt? My eyes fly open and I jump out of bed, looking around anxiously. "Sam, what happened?"

"Dean's been made." Sam says, and that's all he needs to say. I grab my new teddy from the bed, pick up the clothes I left on the foot of the bed, and shove all of them into my bag. Sam is packing up the rest of our things, and the two of us are out the back window in just under two minutes. I'm still in my pajamas, and I have my backpack on one shoulder, with my other bag slung over the other. We wait behind the motel, listening. After five minutes of silence, Sam leads us around the motel to the parking lot.

"What happened?" I ask as we come into the parking lot. The impala is still in the parking spot, and we race over to it, throwing our things in the back and speeding off as fast as we can.

"Dean went to get food. Cops got him for impersonating a US Marshal." Sam says.

"So now what?"

"Now we talk to the husband." Sam says. "After, I'll call and get Dean out."

We speed down the road, going _well_ above "well above" the speed limit. And I thought Dean was a crappy driver. Suddenly, we swerve hard to the right, and turn onto a bumpy road complete with potholes. I'm not prepared for this, and as we run over pothole after pothole, my head hits the window.

I groan in pain, and rub my temple. Sam makes an effort to slow down, but the potholes are still there no matter how slow you go.

"You alright?" Sam asks.

"I'm good, I think." I say. "How far to the man's house?"

"Just up ahead." He tells me, pointing at the trees on our right ahead of us. Up ahead, there was a break in the trees, and a dirt path led into the woods.

" _That's_ where he lives?" I ask Sam. "I don't know about that, Sam. Kinda sketchy."

"Keep in mind, he's an old man." Sam reassures me. "And we probably have a lot more guns than he does."

"And," I add, "we have me."

"What do you mean, we have you?" Sam asks as he turns onto the dirt path.

"Well, Constance is a Woman in White, isn't she? Meaning her husband cheated on her?" I say, trying to get him to come to the realization on his own without actually saying it.

"What're you getting at?" Sam asks, and I can tell that the thought has occurred to him. "You're going to flirt with him? Or what?"

"I'm just saying that having boobs is an incredible power, and I might as well use it." I say. "If showing a bit of cleavage gets his to spill his guts to us, then that's what's gonna happen."

"But with great power comes great responsibility." Sam says. "Dad and Dean let you do that?"

"Dad didn't. If Dad had his way I'd be wearing a potato sack, so you couldn't tell if I had curves or not." I say as we drive through the woods to the husband's house. "But when Dean and I were on solo hunts, Dean never minded if I used my feminine wiles to my advantage. Within limits, anyway. Dean and Dad have both decided that their idea of sex ed is scaring away any male who expresses interest in me."

"Not a bad idea, if you ask me…" Sam mutters under his breath as we pull up to the house. "Alright, I'm a reporter, and you –''

"Will be staying in the car." I say, as I realize I'm still in my pajamas, and no one will buy me as any sort of intern dressed like that. Sam blinks, before he remembers, and nods.

"Alright. You stay in the car, then." He says, opening the door and climbing out.

I watched from the car as Sam and the husband conversed. I watch as the husband gradually gets more and more agitated, before finally shouting at Sam to leave. Sam walks back to the car, a grin on his face.

"Went well?" I ask him, an eyebrow raised.

He shakes his head unabashedly as he got back into the car. "Went great!" he says, laughing a little. "The guy totally cheated on her." He pulls out of what constitutes the driveway, way too fast, overcome by excitement. His words flow out almost too fast to process. "So, an idea occurs to me. We know that Dad's already salted and burned the bones, but what else is keeping Constance here? We saw an article that said the reason Constance killed herself was because her kids died right? In a _bathtub_? I know kids are stupid, but will they really drown themselves unintentionally in a bathtub? So what if, Constance finds out her husband is cheating, kills her kids, and then herself in her grief?" We're back on the bumpy road now, and Sam's too excited to go slow. "What if _that's_ what's keeping her here? Her grief and guilt over killing her children!"

I stay silent for longer than Sam wanted me to, trying to figure out how in the nine hells he went from A to B to X.

"Don't you see?" Sam asks. "The reason she's still here is because she feels guilty about killing her children!"

"That's great, Sam, but… What are we supposed to do about it? Are we supposed to absolve her of her guilt?" I ask him. The excitement drains out of Sam's face as he begins to think again, and he's silent for a while. Finally, I say, "Are we going to get Dean out, Sam?"

That seems to shake him out of his thoughts. "Yeah. Yeah, we should." We're on the main road now, and he fishes his phone out of his pocket. With a flick of his wrists he flips it open, and dials the number. "Hi. I need to speak to the sheriff. It's urgent. Please. It's about the boy who went missing." There's a pause while the sheriff is given the call. "Yes, I have some information about the killer. You're looking for the ghost of a woman named Constance who kills men who're unfaithful. You'll need rock salt and – Hello?" Sam starts laughing. "He hung up!"

"Do you think we gave Dean enough time to escape?" I ask him. He shrugs.

"I don't know. Probably. Hopefully…" Sam says. "Let's head to Constance's house."

"Why?"

"She said on a recording Dean showed me that she can never go home. I wonder why?"

"You probably already have an idea, don't you?" I ask. He smiles.

"I have an _inkling_ of an idea." Sam says. "I'm still trying to think it true. See if it stands to reason."

This is what I loved about having Sam on the case back before he left. He and I were often left alone in motel rooms, and our job was to do research. Mostly it was all Sam. He was a freaking genius. All he really needed from me was a sounding board. Sam had already possibly figured out a huge chunk of the case, and now he just needed to test it. Somehow. He probably had some crazy idea in his head of how he was going to test it.

As Sam drove us to Constance's house, Dean called us. I only hear Sam's side of the conversation, which is frustrating, but normal. Despite the fact that I'm nearly sixteen and plenty capable of killing any monster six ways from Sunday, I'll always be their little sister. Too small to be let in on the big boy conversations, unless I pester them about it.

"Yeah, you're welcome." Sam says. "What? He never goes anywhere without that thing! Well, where are the coordinates? Colorado? Dad went to Colorado? He left in the middle of a case to go to Colorado?" He pauses as Dean says something, but before he can say further, a ghostly woman appears right in front of the Impala. Sam yells something unintelligible as he tries to stop the car, but he can't in time, and we hit the woman. But she dissipates into thin air when we hit her, and that's how I know she's the ghost.

"Sam!" I say. "It's her!"

"Yeah, I got that!" he yells. "Dean, I'll call you back!" he flips the phone shut, and as he does so, a woman's voice says from the backseat,

"Take me home."

I twist around in my seat, reaching for the gun I keep in the glove box. It's rigged to fire rock salt at ghosts. I see the woman from the bridge, Constance Welch, the Woman in White, in the backseat. She's staring at Sam with sad, mournful eyes. She wore a white dress that toed the line between slutty and decent, and she had a perpetual pout.

"No." Sam says, taking his hands off the wheel. "I won't do that."

Constance does nothing, doesn't move or anything, but the impala suddenly starts moving, driving down the road, and I know it's her doing it. We're going slow enough that I decide it's worth the risk to open the door and jump out, and it looks like Sam had the same idea, because we both reach for the car doors at the same time. But as soon as we touch the door handle, the locks come on, and prevent us from opening the door.

 _Guess we're taking her home…_ I think as we head down the highway to Constance's house. Five minutes of awkward and eerie silence later, an old, decrepit house appears, looming into the dark night sky. We come to a stop just in front of the front door. I began to rethink shooting Constance as I slowly reached for the pistol again.

"I can never go home…" Constance says mournfully. As soon as the words leave her lips, my door is flung open, and me along with it. I land on my ass in the dirt, and the door swings shut, locking me out. I don't have a gun on me – in the rush to get out of the motel, there wasn't time. And now I'm locked away from the gun with the rock salt. Is it really likely that Constance would let me into the trunk?

I scramble up out of the dirt, looking around for something I could use to smash the window. Constance is on top of Sam, kissing him, trying to get him to be unfaithful so she could kill him. I spot a rotted log, but would it break the glass, or merely itself?

"Gwen, _get down_!" I heard Dean shout. I duck just before I hear the sound of a gun going off, and glass shattering. Standing up again, I see that Constance is gone. Dean is shouting at Sam, asking if he's alright, but Sam isn't answering. Instead, he floors the car, and it shoots inside the house.

"Sam!" I shout, looking from the hole in the house to Dean.

"If that idiot wrecked my car…" Dean mutters. "C'mon, Gwen!" We both run into the house. Sam has gotten out of the car and is looking around eagerly. "What the hell man!" Dean shouts as we enter.

"Constance can't go home, Dean, she said so herself!" Sam explains rapidly. "Don't you wonder why?" I noticed that his shirt had blood on it, but before I could ask if he was okay, something hard and wooden slams into my hips. I'm pushed up against a wall by a desk, my brothers right next to me. Sam and Dean are trying to push it off, but it's no use. Constance is holding it against us. She appears in front of us, her face grotesque and angry. She suddenly is in front of Sam, her hand on his chest, and Sam groans in pain.

"Hey! Constance, you bitch, get off my brother!" Dean shouts, pushing desperately on the desk. But then, I hear water, like a faucet left running. Constance hears it too, and her face transforms back to normal, but with a look of dread as she steps away from Sam and walks slowly to the staircase. I crane my neck to look at her as she approaches the staircase. Water begins to flow down the stairs and soak the floor, and suddenly, there are two little kids standing in front of Constance. A moment of silent communication passes between them, and then the kids hug their mother. Constance screams as she and her two children melt into a puddle on the floor. I feel the pressure of the desk holding me against the wall release, and I heave a huge sigh of relief, knowing it's over.

Together, my brothers and I push the desk off of us. We look at each other for a brief moment, assessing the damage we'd each been dealt. Sam breaks the silence,

"Damn. I'd forgotten what a rush this was."

Dean smiles, "Yeah, all that book studying, must've been such a drag compared to this." Dean slings his arm around me, and I give him a grateful hug.

"It certainly will be when I go back." Sam says.

I let go of Dean, and look up at Sam with pleading eyes. "You don't have to go back…" I say hopefully.

Sam shakes his head, dashing my hopes. "Yeah, Gwen, I do."

And on that bright and cheerful note, the three of us climb back into the Impala, with Dean lamenting the one itty bitty scratch on baby's paint job. As Dean drove, he had Sam look up on his phone's GPS where the coordinates are.

"What'm I gonna do?" I ask from the backseat.

"You're gonna sleep." Dean says. I roll my eyes, but pull a pillow and blanket up from the floor and get settled none the less. I've been laying there, for what feels like hours, with sleep not even touching me, when Sam says,

"There in Colorado, like you said. Black Water Ridge. Once we get to Stanford, you'll be on the road about fifteen or so hours before you get there."

"And you won't be coming with us." Came Dean's reply.

"No." Sam says. "I told you, Dean, I got an interview."

"Yeah, Sammy, you got an interview, but – C'mon man! Didn't you _miss_ this? You said so yourself, it'll be boring going back now that you've hunted again!" Dean whisper shouts in an effort not to disturb me. "Do you want your life to be boring?"

"No, Dean, I want it to be _safe_!"

"Safe? Sammy, even if you aren't hunting, you'll never be _safe_!" Dean says. "There's always monsters out there, waiting to kill you just for kicks!"

"At least I'll be safer than I am hunting!" Sam snaps. "I want to have kids someday, Dean, and unlike Dad, I don't want them raised like warriors! Like Gwen was raised!"

"Hey, Gwen's turned out just fine! You did, I did! There's nothing wrong with knowing what's out there and how to protect ourselves!"

"Yeah, maybe Gwen turned out okay, but Dean, do you think she's happy?" Sam asks. "Do you know how much she cries every night? How much she wants to be normal?"

"She's a teenage girl, Sam! Crying and wanting to be normal are part of the deal!"

"Yeah, except have you ever seen Gwen cry unless she was getting stitches?" Sam asks. I hate stitches. I always cry when getting them. "And with most teenage girls, they only _feel_ abnormal. Gwen actually is, and she knows it. She's not happy, Dean!"

"Just shut up!" Dean snarls. "Just shut up, Sammy! You've been gone, what, four years? How can you act like you know her?"

"Because I'm her fucking brother, Dean!"

"Yeah? Well so am I! I'm the one who's been there for her these past four years, while you were off at college shaking up with some girl who'll never even know what you used to do for a living!" Dean yells. In the silence that follows, he immediately realizes he's gone to far. How can he not? He stutters for a second, trying to get the words out, but eventually he just shuts up. The rest of the car ride is silent, and I don't sleep a wink.

When we come to a stop outside of Sam's apartment, Dean tries to say goodbye, but Sam just ignores him. He gets his bags out of the trunk, slams it shut, and only speaks to tell Dean,

"Tell Gwen I'll call her. For real this time." Then, he walks away, and he's gone.

Dean is silent for a few seconds after Sam left, before saying,

"Do you want to stop at a motel before heading to Colorado?" Damn him. He could always tell when I was faking sleep. I nodded. "Alright. We'll find one. Hopefully one better than the last one, right?"

I laugh a little, and say, "Your hopes are too high. The last one is par the course for motels. I doubt we'll find an outstanding one here."

Dean agreed with me, before asking in a hesitant voice, "Were you listening? Earlier?"

"Yes." I said simply.

"So you heard what Sammy said?"

"Yes."

"About you not being happy?"

"Yeah, Dean, I heard all of it."

Dean shifted awkwardly in his seat. Dean has always sucked at feelings talks, and he usually brushed them away with insults and sarcasm. It was rare that he actually went into a feelings talk willingly, and rarer still that he started them. He clears his throat and says,

"So… is it true? Are you… not happy?"

"Dean…" I say, not sure how to respond. "I… I'm not sure…"

"Well then… Is it true you cry at night?"

"Yes. Or at least that I'm very sad every night." I tell him. He swallows and looks away, but his eyes catch on something, and dread overcomes his features.

"Gwen, stay in the car." He orders as he climbs out and starts sprinting back towards Sam's apartment. I scramble up in the backseat and look out the back window. I see fire starting in Sam's apartment, and Dean dashing up the fire escape to help Sam. Less than a minute later, Dean and Sam burst out of the apartment, Sam's face damp with either tears or sweat, I couldn't tell. But almost as soon as they were out, fire completely consumed the apartment.

I get out of the car, and run towards them.

"…just like Mom!" Sam was saying as I got close. "It was just like how Dad said Mom died! Pinned to the ceiling, bleeding from her stomach, everything!" I could see now that it was tears on his face, and I immediately gave him a hug. He held onto me tightly. "Just like Mom…" He whispers again before falling silent.

A couple minutes passed, him just holding onto me, hiding his tearful face in my neck, while people around us screamed and called for the fire department. Dean was silent, looking the other way, respecting Sam's grief. But the moment passed. Sam sniffled once, twice, and stood up, letting go of me.

"C'mon," he says. "We got work to do."


	4. Blackwater Ridge

We stayed in Palo Alto for a few days, much to Sam's chagrin. But Dean insisted. It was so close, the thing that killed Mom, and now Jess, and Dean insisted we look for it. It was a fruitless search. I have a feeling Dean was also hesitant to go to Colorado. For some reason. I think he was scared. Sam went along with him for a little while, but after a week, Sam refused to keep looking.

"Dad's getting away." Sam said. "He could be gone by the time we get there."

"C'mon, Sammy, don't you want to find the thing that killed your girl?" Dean asked.

"We're not going to find it." Sam answered. "We've been looking for a week. If we haven't found it by now, we won't find it."

Dean raised an eyebrow, but he conceded, and got in the driver's seat in the impala.

Now we're just entering Colorado. It's silent. The ride's been silent for hours. Dean didn't even play music. The silence speaks louder than any words we could've said. It speaks of Sam's sadness and grief, and of Dean's fear, and of my confusion. Sam's currently sleeping, but he didn't look happy. He twitches, and groans occasionally. I would've woken him up, but it felt like a betrayal of the silence to speak, let alone move.

Dean, apparently, doesn't feel that way.

"C'mon, Sammy! Wake up!" he shouts, shaking Sam awake with one hand. Sam jumps awake, and glares at Dean.

"Dude! The hell was that for?" Sam asks, readjusting his jacket.

"You were having a nightmare." Dean says. "And honestly, it was getting kind of weird. You were just twitching. Like a dead rat."

Sam glares at Dean again, before leaning back against the window.

Then, Dean said something I'd convinced myself he'd never say in a trillion years.

"You wanna drive?"

Both Sam and I looked at Dean in shock. I debated feeling his forehead for a fever, but before I could, Sam said,

"Dean, your whole life you've never asked me that!"

Dean scoffed, "Yeah, well you've been gone for a while. It's a special privilege reserved for those who're looking downright pitiful and need to be cheered up." He looked to Sam to see if he'd say yes. When Sam didn't respond, Dean said, "Just thought you might want to. Never mind."

Sam sighs. "Look, Dean, I know you're worried about me. And I appreciate it. But I'm fine, really."

"Fine?" I asked, honestly a little shocked that Sam would try and pull that one. "You're _fine_? Is that why you haven't had a decent night's sleep in a week?"

Sam twisted around to look at me. "Gwen, please. I'm fine. They're just nightmares. They'll go away eventually."

I raise my eyebrows, and Dean says. "Mhm… Whatever you say Sammy."

Dean reaches into some crevice of the car and pulls out a map. He reaches behind him to hand it to me. As I take it, Sam asks,

"Where are we?"

"Just outside Grand Junction." Dean answers.

"It's weird though." I say, "These coordinates Dad left us? They're just forest. Middle of nowhere."

"Why's Dad sending us there?" Sam asks. I shrug in response, and Dean says,

"Don't matter. We go to those coordinates, we find Dad, and then,"

"We find the thing that killed Mom and Jessica." Sam finishes for Dean. He has a determined glint in his eye as he speaks, and he would look intimidating, if it weren't for the bags under his eyes that announce his lack of sleep to the world.

A few hours later, we pull up in the parking lot of a ranger station. I look up, dazed and confused. I was dozing in and out of sleep before we stopped.

"Wha' we doin' 'ere?" I slur, clutching my pounding head. Car sickness. Great.

"Sammy wants to find out more about the place we're heading before we get there." Dean explains. He looks at me in the rearview mirror. "You wanna stay here, Gwen?"

I shake my head. "No. Hopefully I can get a soda or something in there so I can take a pain killer. If not... Fresh air'll do me good."

"Alright… Just… Don't throw up again like last time." Dean says, opening the door and getting out of the car. I climb out as well, and cling to the car frame when the dizziness sets in after I stand. Once that clears, I follow my two brothers into the station.

Inside are some cheap souvenirs, like shirts, teddy bears, and hats, a 3D map of the area, a small vending machine, and lots of other assorted junk that looked like no one's touched it since the dawn of time. I make a beeline for the vending machine, and feed it a couple of bills. The thing must be ancient, because it takes way longer than it should've for my soda to be dispensed. Although, maybe that's just 'cause I'm tired. I twist the cap of the soda off, reach into my pocket for the pain killers, and down a few pills.

With that done, I walk around the station, keeping an eye on Sam and Dean. A ranger comes up to them, and when he speaks, they both jump, startled. I chuckle to myself that they didn't notice him.

"You boys ain't thinking of heading into Blackwater Ridge are ya?" he asks.

"No sir," Sam answers, "we're environmental study majors from UC Boulder. Working on a paper."

Sam laughs nervously, and Dean grins awkwardly as he does a little fist bump in the air and says, "Recycle, man!"

The ranger does not look impressed. "Bull." He says. "You boys are friends of Haley, right?"

The boys look confused and a bit on the spot. I roll my eyes. You'd think Dad taught them better than that.

"Yes, sir, we are." I say, walking up to the ranger and my brothers. "I'm sorry they suck at lying. Haley thought you weren't gonna help us if we told you we were her friends."

"Girl's crazy…" the ranger muttered to himself. "I'll tell you exactly what I told her. And tell her not to send nobody else, because it's all any of us know. Her brother filled out a backcountry permit, said he wouldn't be back until the twenty-fourth. Not exactly a missing persons, now, is it?"

I smile widely, nodding, "No sir, doesn't sound like it. But, if we just go back and tell her the same thing you've told her, you know she's just gonna do something else to try and find her brother. Do you have something else we could give her?" I widen my eyes so I look cuter and more innocent. A little mind trick that I find works especially well to get people to give me what I need.

The ranger sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose, and looks at me with a tired look in his eye. "I can give you a copy of the permit, so at least she can see that I'm telling the truth."

"Thank you sir!" I say happily as the ranger goes into the back office.

"Gwen, what're you doing?" Sam asks as soon as the door is closed.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"What do we need that for? We already have the coordinates! Let's get out there, find Dad, and focus on finding whatever killed Mom and Jess!" Sam says.

"There's no harm talking to this girl." I say. Usually Sam isn't this trigger happy.

"Yeah, Sammy, we wanna know what it is we're dealing with. Since when are you shoot first, ask questions later?" Dean asks. Sam shrugs as the ranger comes back out with a sheet of paper.

"Here you go, miss. Hope Haley finds her brother all right." Says the ranger as he hands me the sheet of paper. I thank him, and lead my brothers out of the station. As I wait for Dean to unlock the car, Dean and Sam walk extra slow as they talk.

"Sammy, I'm kinda worried about how headstrong you're being." Dean says. "That's my thing. You're usually the one who _wants_ to go talk to the family or whatever. Since when have you been so reckless?"

"It's not reckless." Says Sam. "And since now."

Once we start driving, Dean plays some Pink Floyd, but aside from the music, we're silent. Sam seems to be close to falling asleep, and he keeps jerking himself awake. We pull up in front of a tired looking house, and Sam sighs before heaving himself out of the car. The three of us climb the steps to the door, and knock politely. A young woman answers the door.

I immediately get a distrustful vibe off of the girl. Not that we shouldn't trust what she says, but that she's very distrustful of us. Of outsiders. Just something in her expression when she answers the door, in how she carries herself. Her eyes scan Sam and Dean, before resting on me.

We're all silent for a second, until Dean speaks. "You must be Haley Collins. I'm Dean, this is Sam, and she's Gwen. We're, uh, rangers with the Park Service. Wilkinson sent us over."

Dean pauses and waits for a response from Haley, but he gets none. He continues, more hesitantly. "He wanted us to as a few questions about your brother Tommy."

Haley still doesn't answer right away, but after a second she says, "Lemme see some ID."

Dean pulls out a fake, and holds it up to the screen door. Hayley looks at it, then at Dean, then at me. I can tell she thinks I look a little young to be a ranger, but she opens the door for us anyway. "C'mon in."

Inside, Haley leads us into a kitchen, where a boy about my age is sitting at the table on a laptop. His eyes are focused on what he's reading, but you can tell he's listening to us. Hayley stands, arms crossed, and looks at us. Waiting.

Sam clears his throat. "So if Tommy's not due back for a while, how do you know something's wrong?"

"He checks in every day by cell. He emails. Sends photos, stupid videos." Haley says. "We haven't heard anything from him in over three days."

"Maybe he can't get cell reception?" Sam suggests.

"He's got a satellite phone, too." Haley counters.

"Could it be he's just having fun and forgot to check in?" Dean asks, a little bit of condescension dripping into his tone.

"He wouldn't do that." Says the boy. I look up at him, momentarily forgetting that he's there. He looks at me too, but drops his gaze after a moment.

Haley puts a bowl of fruit on the table. "Our parents are gone. It's just my two brothers and me. We keep pretty close tabs on each other."

Sound familiar?

I couldn't help but think about how similar we are. I only have my brothers now. No Dad. No Mom. Nada. How would I be acting if one of my brothers went missing suddenly?

"Can I see the pictures he sent you?" asks Sam. Haley nods, and brings up the pictures on a laptop.

"That's Tommy." She says. The picture is kinda grainy and it's dark, but I can see the family resemblance. Haley clicks the laptop again, and a video comes up.

"Hey Haley, day six, we're still out near Blackwater Ridge. We're fine, keeping safe, so don't worry, okay? Talk to you tomorrow."

I don't see anything odd about the video, so I'm kinda surprised when Sam asks for Haley to forward the emails to her. Haley agrees, and then Dean says,

"Well, we'll find your brother. We're heading out to Blackwater first thing."

"Well maybe we'll see you there." Haley says. She sees the look on Dean's face as says, "Look, I can't keep sitting around here anymore. He's my brother. So I hired a guy, and we're going to get our brother back."

With that, we're shown out of the house.

Sharing a look amongst ourselves, we walked back to the Impala.

As we drive, it's mostly silent. None of us know quite what to do, now that we've talked to the girl. We have the coordinates, we have a missing camper, but nothing that would suggest that this is something supernatural we're dealing with other than the fact that the coordinates were in Dad's journal. Which, as far as any of us are concerned, is the bible of hunting supernatural crap. We're pretty stumped.

In one of our blips of conversation as we drive to our motel, we discuss possibilities.

"Cursed family?" Sam suggests, throwing his hand in the air as he tosses the suggestion out there. "Something's killing the members of this family? I mean, Haley did say that their parents were gone."

"Yeah, but there were other people on that camping trip, not just Tommy. Other people not related to Tommy and Haley." I point out.

"Cursed area?" Dean says. "Pissed off ghost killing everyone who goes there?"

"Possibly…" I muse. "But this place is supposedly a popular camping site, at least around here. If a ghost were haunting the place, wouldn't someone else have looked into it?"

"Or, maybe this isn't anything supernatural at all, and this is just a colossal waste of our time!" Sam mutters under his breath.

"Ah, c'mon, Sammy! If it wasn't supernatural, Dad wouldn't have left the coordinates in his journal!" Dean says, trying to bolster Sam's mood.

An idea comes to me. "Maybe we should check the journal? See if Dad has anything about what we're looking for in it?"

"Good idea!" says Dean.

We pull into the motel parking lot, and quickly check in. I lay on one of the beds, reading a book, while Sam looks through Dad's journal and Dean showers. This is what constituted as down time for us. Dean came out of the shower a few minutes later, a towel wrapped around his waist and water still dripping down his body. Sam rises to take his place in the shower, and Dean sits down at the table in the kitchenette. We hear the water start up again, and then Sam shouts,

"Dean, you couldn't have left me _any_ shampoo?"

"Maybe if you didn't have such long hair, you wouldn't need so much shampoo!" Dean replied. "I left plenty of shampoo for you and Gwen!"

I roll my eyes at my brothers, and focus on my book again. But then my stomach grumbles. Loud.

"Someone hungry?" Dean asks.

"Eh." I reply.

"Eh?" Dean repeats. "Your tummy just rumbled so loudly we should be getting a noise complaint!"

I laugh, "Alright Dean, fine, I'm hungry. Let's find a grocery market and I'll make us some one pot pasta or something."

Dean considers for a moment. "Actually, I could use a drink. Let's go to a bar."

"You always want to go to a bar!" I complain.

"And you always want to stay in the motel with a book!" Dean retorts, smiling.

"Only 'cause you never let me go to the library! I'd happily read a book there, too!"

Dean rolls his eyes at me. "C'mon. Sammy and I will get dressed, and we'll head out." Dean grabs his clothes from his bag, and throws a pillow at me. "Don't look!"

"Are you _still_ bashful, Dean?" I ask sarcastically as I rest the pillow over my face so I can't see him.

"If you don't see it, you won't know it exists!" Dean explains with a childish logic.

"What, that _you_ have a penis, or that penises exist in general?" I ask. I feel another feather light thump as a pillow hits my stomach.

"Both!" Dean says as the bathroom door opens.

"Oh, Dean, dressed so soon? Don't you usually lay around in your towel for a few hours after?" Sam asks.

"We're going to a bar." I explain. "Is it safe to look yet?"

"Yeah, it's safe." Sam says, and I yank the pillow off my face and throw it at Dean. It catches him by surprise, and hits him right on the nose. An evil grin spreads across his face, and with menacing precision he picks up two pillows and raises an arm to throw one at me.

Sam steps in front of him. "Whoa, hold up, cowboy. Aren't we going to a bar?" Sam grabs the pillows out of Dean's hands, and gives him a stern look. Dean looks like a dejected toddler as he grabs the keys to the Impala and heads towards the door. Sam looks back at me. "Are you going to change?"

I looked down at my current outfit, which was crumpled and probably smelled a little. I nodded, and waved him out of the room. "I'll be quick." I say. I quickly yank my shirt over my head and shimmy out of my jeans. I pull on a pair of denim shorts that flirt with being too short, but still make the cut, and a cute short sleeve shirt with a popsicle on it. When I got it a few years ago it was a little big on me, but puberty has done its job, and now my chest fills up all the extra room. I put on some ankle boots with a little heel, and walk out of the room to meet Sam and Dean.

Dean just sighs when I walk out of the room, but Sam gives Dean a look. When Sam left, I wasn't allowed to wear shorts, and certainly not shorts that went above the knees. Dean shrugs though, and we climb into the Impala. In the front seat, Sam is leafing through the pages of Dad's journal. Dean pulls into the parking lot of a bar and restaurant.

"Alright! Let's get us some food and an ice cold beer!" Dean cheers as he steps out of the car onto the pavement. I open my mouth to ask if that applies to me, but before the words can even start, he points over his shoulder and says, "Not you. You get a soda!" I make a face at him, and Sam laughs, wrapping his arm around my shoulder as we walk inside. We take a seat at a booth near the fire exit, and wait for our waitress to come around. Sam is still looking through the journal, quietly absorbed in the book. Dean and I make comments about the people in the restaurant.

"See that guy at the bar? The one with the half sleeve on each arm?" asks Dean, nodding his head in the direction of the bar. I look, and see a whole lineup of men with half sleeves on each arm, but only one really sticks out.

"The skinny one who looks like he hasn't eaten a piece of meat since the day he was born?"

"Yeah, that one. Look at the sides of his head next time he turns." We only have to watch him for a couple of seconds before he turns his head, and we're treated to a dreadfully familiar sports logo buzzed into his hair.

"Well there's no accounting for taste!" I say, still trying to wrap my head around the man having the guts and the stupidity to do that.

Finally, our waitress comes up.

"Hi, welcome to Ours, may I take your order?" she chirps, whipping out a pen and a notepad.

Dean smiles at her, and rattles off his well rehearsed order. It's the same every time. "Hey, I'll have the bacon burger with extra onions and a side of bacon, and a beer."

"You know they say eating a piece of bacon takes away seven minutes of your life!" The waitress says, giggling.

"I've done the math." I say to her. "If that were true, he would've died in 1460." She smiles at me, expectantly waiting for my order. "Can I get a ceaser salad, some French fries, and a root beer?"

"Sure thing, hon." Says the waitress, before looking at Sam. "And for you, sir?"

Sam looks up, startled. "Uh, yes, sorry, I'll just have the house soup thanks."

"Coming right up!" she says, smiling widely and rushing off.

As soon as the waitress disappears around a corner, Sam pushes the journal in between Dean and I. "So get this," he says, "turns out Tommy and his buddies ain't the only ones to go missing in Blackwater Ridge. The place doesn't get a lot of traffic, mostly local campers. But still, back in April, two hikers went missing out there. They were never found." Sammy gingerly pulls out a small stack of newspaper clippings that were paper clipped to the journal, and hands them to Dean.

"Any before that?" Dean asks, sifting through the clippings.

"Yeah. 1982, eight people vanished off the face of the earth, never found. Then in 1959, and then 1936. Every twenty-three years, like clockwork." Sam says. "Authorities say it's grizzly bears each time."

I reach across the table and grab a piece of newspaper. The headline screams in bold letters, "Grizzly Bear Attacks!"

Sam pulls his laptop onto the table, clicks open something, and shows it to us. It's the video Tommy sent to his siblings. "Now watch this." Sam says. He clicks a button, and the video begins to play frame by frame. I watch curiously, and see a shadow appear behind the tent in one frame, but disappear the next.

"Wait, Sammy, play that again." Dean says. Sammy restarts it, and when the shadow disappears again he says,

"That was three frames you just saw there. Less than a fraction of a second. Whatever this thing is, it can move."

Sam freezes the frame on the shadow. I stare at it intently, trying to think on what it could be. "What's that look like to you, boys?" I ask. The shadow appeared humanoid. Very skinny, very elongated limbs. I was puzzled on what it could be. A vampire, sure, would explain why it looked human, but then why only attack every twenty-three years?

Dean peered at it too. "Hard to tell from just a shadow. But the thing looks like it walks on two legs."

"I got one more thing before our waitress comes back." Sam says. He taps a newspaper article laying on the table. "In '59, one of the campers survived this supposed grizzly bear attack. Just a kid. He barely crawled out of the woods alive."

Dean looks down at the clipping. "Is there a name?"

Sam nods, but has to quickly move all of the newspapers out of the way, because the waitress has returned with our drinks.

"Anything else I can get you?" she asks.

"No, thank you, but if something comes up, we'll let you know." Says Dean. The waitress disappears again, and when she's gone, Dean says, "We'll have to visit him tonight."

Sam and I nod, before we descend into friendly and innocent conversation. Enjoying a brief sense of feeling normal. We even order pie to go before we leave to visit Mr. Shaw. Before we get back to work.


	5. Blackwater Ridge 2

We pull up in front of an old house that has that sad look to it. The look of a house that used to be grand and pretty, but now looks dirty and falling apart. We walk up the front steps and knock on the door. A couple seconds later, an elderly man answers.

"Yes?" he asks us.

"Hello, sir." I say. "We'd like to talk to you about the night you were attacked in '59."

The man's face suddenly has a dark shadow over it. "Now why would you kids want to know about that?"

"We're trying to find the thing that did it, sir." I tell him.

"It was a bear that did it." Mr. Shaw says, almost before I was even done speaking. "Bears don't live that long."

Behind me, Sam says, "Sir, we all know that wasn't a bear that attacked you and your parents. Or who got those campers back in April."

"Or the campers who went missing a few days ago." Dean added.

"Please, sir, we're trying to help." I say, using my most convincing voice.

Mr. Shaw pauses for a minute, before holding the door open for us. He wordlessly vanishes into the house. After sharing a look between ourselves, we follow him in, shutting the door behind us.

"You're right." Mr. Shaw says as he sits down in an old rocking chair. The inside of the house smells strongly of liquor and Cuban cigars, and trash litters the floor. It's a sad picture, the old man sitting in his dirty living room chair, staring blankly ahead. "It was no bear that attacked my family that night. But I don't see what difference it'd make, telling you." He says absently, taking a puff of his cigar.

"If we knew what we were dealing with, we might be able to stop it." Says Dean.

"I seriously doubt that." Says Mr. Shaw with dry humor. "You wouldn't believe me anyways. Nobody ever did."

"Try us." I say in a tone equal to his.

"Mr. Shaw, what did you see?" Sam asks. Despite being the tallest and not being the only girl in our little group, Sammy always came off as less confrontational and more open and trustworthy than me or Dean. Sometimes Sam found it easier to get girls to talk than Dean.

There was a pause before Mr. Shaw answers us. "I didn't see anything. The thing moved to fast, hid too well. I heard it though. It had a roar like no man or animal I ever heard." He stares off into the distance, only moving to bring the cigar to his lips.

"It came at night?" Sam asks. Mr. Shaw nodded. "Got inside your tent?"

At this, Mr. Shaw laughs. A mean, old and tired kind of laugh. "Boy, it got inside our cabin! I was sleeping in front of the fireplace when it came in. It didn't break a window or bash the door down, no. It _unlocked_ the door! Do you know of a bear that can do something like that?" he sinks back into his chair. "I didn't even wake up till I heard my parents screaming."

"It killed them?" Sam asks.

"Dragged them off into the night." Mr. Shaw says. Something seems to rouse him from his lethargic state of remembrance and grief, and he stands. "Why it left me alive… been asking myself that ever since." His hands go towards his collar, and he unbuttons his shirt to reveal three long scars. They looked an awful lot like claw marks. The scars were raised and, though they were years old, were still red and puckered as if they'd just formed. "Did leave me this though. There's something evil in those woods. It was some sort of demon."

Sam and Dean looked at each other, doing that big-brother-telepathic-communication thing. I make my best effort to smile at Mr. Shaw. "Thank you for helping us, sir. We're going to kill this bastard."

Mr. Shaw gave a tired half smile back. "I hope you do, miss." With that, he showed us to the door. "Good luck." Was all he said before shutting the door behind us.

We climb back into the Impala. Sam looks puzzled, and for once even Dean is silent. I'm pretty drained, too, and in the comfortable silence of the Impala, I almost fell asleep. I jolt back into consciousness when the Impala stops moving, but that swiftly gives way into sleepiness again. Sam has to carry me back into the motel room.

It's easily past eleven pm as we walk through the hallways to our room. Even so, Dean speaks in a hushed whisper. "Spirits and demons don't need to unlock doors. They want in, they go through the walls."

"So it's probably something corporeal." Sam says.

"Corporeal? Excuse me, professor." Dean scoffs.

"Shut up." Sam groans, only half playful. "So what do you think?"

"Claws, fast moving… Could be a skin walker, or maybe a black dog." Dean says thoughtfully. "Whatever we're talking about, we're talking about a creature, and it's… _corporeal_. Which means we can kill it."

Dean opened our motel door, and Sam and Dean hustle inside. Sam gently sets me on the bed, before heading to the bathroom. Grumpy and half asleep, I feel around for my teddy, and once I have him, I burrow under the covers. I slowly descend into unconsciousness, vaguely noticing in the back of my head that it actually looks like I'll be able to sleep easy tonight, as I listen to the sounds of Sam and Dean showering and getting ready for bed. When the shower turned off for the second time, I felt the bed dip as one of them climbed in with me. I rolled over into his arms, and could tell by the cologne it was Dean.

"Night Dean…" I mumbled, burrowing deeper into his arms under the blankets like I used to when I was a kid.

"Night, Gwen." Dean whispered back.

With little else happening or occupying my thoughts, I sink into the deep, dark abyss that is sleep. Thankfully, I sleep through the night, and I wake up peacefully in the morning, still cocooned in my blankets.

"Good morning, sleeping beauty." Dean says from the table, already dressed and cleaning a gun before he packs into a duffel.

"Morning!" I yawn as I stretch luxuriously.

"Slept like a baby." Sam comments from the other bed, where he is also cleaning and packing different weapons into a duffel bag.

"For once." I agree, climbing out of bed and looking through my bag for a change of clothes. I had slept in the outfit I went to the diner in, and it's getting uncomfortable. I pull out a black wife beater, a purple flannel shirt, and some jeans. Most of my jeans are either ripped to shreds, or covered in blood. These are the former. They have tears on the right upper thigh, and the whole right knee is missing, along with part of the right calf. The left side only has a few small tears, thank god. This particular pair unfortunately fell victim to a werewolf pup.

In the bathroom, I quickly hop into the shower, casting my dirty clothes onto the towel Sam and Dean had put on the floor. The water is actually warm this time, and to celebrate I spend a few minutes just standing in the warm water before I start actually showering. I'm out in less than ten, and dried off and dressed in another three. I open the bathroom door, steam following me out. I pull on some cowboy boots. By now, Sam and Dean are ready to go.

"Hurry up." Dean says, throwing me some knives and a small gun to hide on me. "We're trying to get there before Haley and her brother do."

As I strap one of the knives onto my left calf where they're hidden by my boot, and hide the gun in my waistband, Sammy says,

"We can't let that Haley girl go out there. We just can't."

"Oh yeah?" Dean asks, "Well what're we gonna tell her? That she can't go into the woods because of a big, scary monster? You think she'll buy that?"

I put another knife in my back pocket, and strap the final one under my sleeve of my right arm. Sam shrugs. "Yeah." He says.

"Her brother's missing, Sam! I mean, come on! She's not gonna just sit this out." Dean explains. "Now we go with her, we protect her, and we keep our eyes peeled for our fuzzy predator friend."

"I have to agree with Dean on this, Sammy." I add. "If Dean or I was the one missing, would you be willing to sit back and let some random guys who just showed up go save us?"

Sam doesn't answer my question. He merely says, "Finding Dad's not enough? Now we gotta babysit too?" Dean and I both stare at him. "What?" Sam asks.

"Nothing." Says Dean. He picks up his duffel and walks out of the room. Sam looks at me, and I'm struck by how ragged he looks. He really needs to sleep. Sam shoulders the duffel bag, and waves me out the door.

"C'mon, Gwen. Let's hunt this thing down and get the hell outta here." Sam says tiredly. I follow him out the door and into the impala. The ride to Blackwater Ridge in the Impala was tense and quiet, each of us preparing for the hunt ahead. When we pulled up into the parking lot, Haley and Ben were standing at the forests edge with a middle aged man.

"I'm telling you, I don't think Ben should come." The man was saying as I climb out of the Impala. As we climb out, the three of them stop and look at us.

"Who are you?" the man asks.

"Hello rangers." Haley says guardedly.

"Hello." I greet them while Sam walks ahead to the beginnings of a path, and Dean begins shouldering duffle bags filled with weapons.

"You're rangers?" the man asks skeptically, looking particularly at me.

"That's right." says Dean.

"And you're going hunting in biker boots and torn jeans?" Haley says, looking at me. I smile back at her.

"Well, honey, I don't do shorts." I say, looking at her shorts that are just barely a decent length to go hiking.

The man narrows his eyes at me. "What, you think this is funny? It's dangerous back country out there, and her brother could be hurt!" he turns back to Haley. "So could your other one. He and this one," he throws his head in my direction, "should stay here!"

I'm personally offended that this man thinks I can't hold my own in the woods. I'm about to open my mouth and say so in none-to-kind terms, but Dean beats me to it. "Believe me," he says, "We know all about how dangerous this could be. But she's fully trained, and we're just trying to help them find their brother." He struts past the man and Haley. "Let's get a move on. Haley's brother isn't going to magically pop into the parking lot while we're just standing here."

The man just kind of looks after Dean, slack-jawed, before walking after him. Sam waits until Haley and Ben have passed him, before motioning for me to pass him as well, so he brings up the rear. I'm a little hesitant to have someone as sleep deprived as Sammy bringing up the rear, but even sleep deprived, he's stronger than me, so I don't question it. As we hike up a hill through the woods, Ben slows down so that we're next to each other.

"Alright, what's going on?" he asks in a low whisper. "You're way too young to be a ranger, none of you have uniforms, and all you could possibly have for rescue equipment is in a couple of duffle bags."

I take a deep breath. Explaining things to civvies was one of the worst parts of the job. Just as I'm debating what and exactly how much to tell him, Dean almost steps in a bear trap, saved only by Roy. Ben grabs my arm.

"You're not rangers. So who the hell are you?"

"Hey hey hey, man, chill." Sam says, stepping up to me and Ben.

"Sam, it's okay. Go ahead." I tell him. Sam looks like he's about to argue, but something makes him shake his head and move on. I grab Ben's wrist and remove it from my arm. "Sam, Dean and I are brothers. We're looking for our father, and last we knew he was around here. So we figured, you and us, we're in the same boat."

Ben twists his wrist out of my grip and gives me an even look. "Then why didn't you just tell us that?"

"I'm telling you now, aren't I?" I ask. "'Sides, no offense to your sister, but she didn't seem the type to be all lovey 'We're all in this together'."

"True." Ben says, beginning to walk again. "We're kind of close-knit."

"So are we." I tell him, walking side by side.

"Hey, keep up, you two!" Roy calls back at us. I glare at him, but speed up. Ben keeps pace with me.

"So your father was camping out here?" he asks as we pass Sam.

"Something like that." I say. "We don't really know. We haven't seen him in a while."

"Oh…" Ben says, sadness creeping into his tone. "Has he been gone a while?"

"Only a few weeks or so." I say, shrugging. "It's just like with you and your siblings. We keep close tabs on each other, so when Dad stopped answering our calls, we got concerned."

Ben nods in understanding. We talk in quiet voices as we hike through the woods but as we get closer to the coordinates, I notice that the sounds of our little party seem to be the only ones. Eventually, Roy stops us.

"Here it is," he says, letting his backpack fall to the ground. "Blackwater Ridge."

"What coordinates are we at?" Sam asks. Ben is quiet for the moment, so I listen extra close for a second. Quiet. The kind of quiet that in a horror movie means you're about to get killed. I walk up to Dean.

"Hear that?" I ask him, looking around carefully.

Dean nods. "Not even crickets."

Roy says loudly to Dean, "I'm gonna go take a look around."

"You shouldn't go off by yourself!" I say, perhaps a bit too quickly.

Roy smiles at me condescendingly. "That's sweet, babe. Don't worry about me." He pushes through the foliage and continues walking. Dean, who's anger at Roy for calling me babe is simmering just beneath the surface, snaps at Haley and Ben,

"Alright, hurry up. Everyone sticks together. Let's go."

We follow Roy further into the woods, until Haley needs to stop by a large rock to glug water. I'm getting tense and impatient, waiting around to gank this thing so while we all rest, I sit next to the rock and sharpen a nice log stick with my pocket knife.

Suddenly, Roy calls to us. "Haley! Haley, come here!" That girl is up and running for Roy's voice before the sentence was half over, leaving the rest of us little choice but to follow. When we find Roy, we come into a clearing overshadowed by immensely tall pine trees. It must be around midday, but the light is getting dimmer already because the pine needles are snuffing out all the light. That, combined with the grisly scene at the remains of the campsite, makes this whole thing substantially creepier.

The tents are still there, torn open, blood-stained material flapping in the breeze. The supplies are thrown around the whole area, bloodstained and damaged. A sleeping bag lay just outside one of the damaged tents, with two long claw strikes. The white fluffy interior to the sleeping bag was stained pink by the blood that was splattered across the bag.

"Oh my god…" Haley choked out, her eyes immediately welling with tears. Her hand started covering her mouth, but as she ran to the campsite shouting "Tommy! Tommy?" the hand slowly lowered itself to her neck. She crouched by the sleeping bag just outside the tent, choking on her tears. "This was Tommy's…" she says.

"Looks like a grizzly." Roy says quietly, dropping his bag in the dead leaves. Sam drops his stuff as well, crouching next to Haley and hugging her tightly.

"Tommy!" Haley wails again, before Sam shushes her.

"Shhhh… The thing might still be out there!" he warns.

Dean, who had followed a set of tracks to the edge of the clearing, calls Sam and I over.

"What you got?" I ask him lowly as I crouch besides him, looking at the tracks. I'd never been too good at the visual aspects of tracking something, due to a myriad of visual impairments that we never had the time or the money to get fixed, so right now all I'm looking at is a mass of orange-ish yellow on the ground.

"The bodies were dragged from the campsite, but here the tracks just stop." Dean says, gesturing vaguely to the dead leaves we're looking at.

"That's weird…" Sam says, standing up.

"I'll tell you what man, this ain't no skinwalker!" Dean says, rising as well.

"Or a black dog." I add, straightening up. We walk back towards the main part of the campsite, where Haley has found Tommy's cellphone, broken and bloody. "He could still be alive." I tell her in a vain attempt at comfort. She gives me a look that tells me to bleep off, and I'm about to, when I hear someone screaming in the woods.

"Help me! Help me! Aw, dear god, somebody help me!"


	6. Blackwater Ridge 3

And then, we're all running through the woods. Haley is shouting, "Tommy? Tommy?!" and Dean is pulling his gun out just as we come to another clearing where the voice must've came from.

"What?" I ask, gasping for breath. "This can't be! Where'd he go?"

"Alright, everyone, back to camp, back to camp!" Sam says, ushering Haley and Roy back the way we came. His voice sounds panicky, but his face remains controlled. We rushed back to the trashed campsite, and let out a collective groan.

Everyone had dropped their packs when we'd arrived, and now, they're all gone. All our supplies, all our weapons!

"Our bags!" Haley exclaims, looking around the edges just to make sure they hadn't been pushed to the side in our mad rush to follow the voice.

Roy seems peeved about losing the bags. "Well, there goes my GPS and satellite!"

"What the hell is going on?" Haley asks, growing more and more panicked by the minute.

"The thing's smart, I'll give it that." Sam says. "It wants to cut us off so we can't call for help."

"It?" Roy asks, giving Sam a look. "You mean 'they'? Some nutjob just stole all our gear!"

Sam ignored Roy, instead tapping my shoulder and leading Dean and I away to the edge of the clearing. "Dean, gimme that journal again."

Dean handed over the journal, giving Sam a look. Sam flips through the pages, before stopping at a page and showing us what he'd found.

"A _wendigo_?" I asked, skeptical beyond belief. "Can't be. They don't come this far out."

"Here me out." Sam said. "Wendigos are humans that fed on human flesh to keep from starving. It used to be human, so it can mimic a human's voice! Think about it, the claws, the voice, hibernating for twenty-three years!"

Dean and I look at each other, before Dean groans. "Great." He throws up his gun. "Then this is useless."

Sam nods, and I grab my two brother's arms to get their attention. "We need to get these people to safety!" I tell them. "They're out of their element to begin with, but Wendigos aren't easy even for experienced hunters!"

Sam nods, and says to the group at large, "Alright, change of plans, listen up! It's time to go. Things have gotten a bit more complicated."

"What?" Haley shrieks.

"We're not leaving before we've found our brother!" says Ben.

"Look, Ben, hate to break it to you, but your brother is most likely a pile of bones with all the meat picked off by now." I say. I have no filter, which comes in handy sometimes when you need to get the point across to someone. "That thing's probably killed him, and if we go looking for him, it'll kill us too."

Roy scoffs, rolling his eyes. "Look, honey, don't worry. Whatever's out there, I think I can handle it."

"It's not us we're worried about." Sam says. "If you shoot this thing, you're just going to make it mad. We have to leave, now."

Roy looks tired with the whole lot of us. "One, you're talking nonsense. Two," he got up in Sam's face, trying to be intimidating and failing because it's hard to be intimidating when you're a good head and a half shorter. "you're in no position to be giving anyone orders."

Dean steps up to the two of them, holding up his hands appealingly. "Relax!"

Sam and Roy ignore him. Sam snaps, "We never should've let you come out here in the first place! Alright? I'm trying to protect you!"

" _You_ , protect _me_? I was hunting these woods when your mommy was still kissing you goodnight!" Roy snaps back.

Sam's face hardened. The one big Winchester weak spot. You don't mention our mother. We get touchy, and we might beat the living daylights out of you. "Oh, yeah? This thing is a damn near perfect hunter! It's smarter than you, and it's going to hunt you down and eat you alive unless we get your sorry ass out of here!"

Roy laughs. "You know you're crazy, right?"

"Yeah, you ever hunt a wen-'' Sam gets cut off by Dean pushing him. Haley and Dean manage to pull Roy and Sam apart.

"Chill out!" Dean orders.

"Stop it! Stop!" Haley shouts. "Everybody just stop! Tommy might be out here, and I'm not leaving without him." She sends me a long look. "Pile of bones or not."

There was a long, awkward, tense pause, in which everyone stares each other down. Finally, Dean takes a deep breath, and says, "It's getting late. This thing is a great hunter during the day, but an unbelievably one at night. We'll never beat it now that the sun's going down. We need to settle in and protect ourselves."

"How?" Haley asks.

"Anasazi symbols." Dean says, tossing the journal to me and giving me a look to get started. I open the journal to the wendigo page, which was opposite the how-to page for the Anasazi symbols. I begin drawing the symbols around the edge of the clearing. "Sam, start making a fire." Dean orders. "And you-'' referring to Roy, "-shut your mouth, sit down, and stay there."

The sun was quickly setting, and I worked as fast as I could while still making the symbols be effective. I only made it about a quarter of the way around before it was nighttime. Ben held a flashlight over my shoulder to help me see, while Sam convinced a fire to come to life in the center. Dean starts at the other end of the circle and begins making the symbols as well to hurry it up.

Roy is leaning against a rock, a sarcastic smile on his face. "So these… Anasazi symbols… are going to protect us?"

"No one likes a skeptic, Roy." Dean says shortly as he and I finish the circle of protection symbols. The wendigo can't cross now.

I walk over to the fireplace, sitting next to Ben, staring into the flames. Dean dragged Sam over to the edge of the clearing, and it was clear that they were having a serious conversation. I only caught pieces of it.

"Why we still even here?" that's Sam.

"Dad's giving us a job…" Dean says.

Just as they finish up the conversation, a twig snaps, and everyone in the camp freezes, looking towards the sound. "Help me, please!" something shouts. Dean, Sam, and I immediately have our guns out. "Help!" Haley flicks on a flashlight, and shines it into the woods. We hear nothing, see nothing.

"He's trying to draw us out." Says Dean. "Just stay cool, and stay in the circle."

"Inside the magic circle?" Roy asks. It's seriously starting to piss me off how nonchalant and sarcastic this son of a bitch is being about this. We could all be dead by morning and he's acting like this is some Halloween prank gone wrong!

"Help me! Help me!" screams the Wendigo. We all ignore it, waiting anxiously, holding our breaths. After a few seconds of no response, the thing starts growling. And it ain't a pretty sound, either. If my heart weren't already pumping out what feels like three hundred beats per minute, the sound of that thing growling might've gotten me there.

It seems to have finally spooked some sense into Roy, because he picks up his gun from where it lay at his side, and points it into the woods. "That ain't no grizzly." He says.

"No, really?" I ask him, the sarcasm so thick it would choke an elephant. Haley rushes over to Ben, who's looking a bit green, and starts cooing in his ear. She shrieks when the Wendigo rushes past our clearing in an attempt to scare us.

"It's here." Sam announces, his voice sounding like he's expecting to die and that he's accepted it. In fact, now that I think about it, I'm not even sure _I_ think we're getting out of this one, when we have three civvies with us and one of them has a definite death wish.

Roy shoots at the thing as it passes, and again when he hears the sound of impact. "I hit it!" he cheers, before leaping up and rushing out of the circle to his death. See? Death wish. All Roy's succeeded in doing is pissing it off, and getting himself killed. I know this as soon as he leaves the protective circle.

Dean shouts after Roy to stop, but of course he doesn't listen. Dean turns to Haley, Ben and me, "Don't move." His tone leaves no room for argument. Haley grabs a stick and puts one end in the fire. When she pulls it out, she has a makeshift torch/weapon. Sam and Dean run after Roy, and fear grips my chest. I'm not exactly torn up about Roy dying, he's an idiot and we're better off now that his arrogant ass is as good as dead. But I need my brothers alive!

"It's over here!" Roy shouts. "It's in the tree!" then I hear the snap of his neck, and Dean shouting Roy's name. Then it's silent. And silence is bad, because it either means that the Wendigo has killed my brothers, taken my brothers, or some third, unspeakable option. This is bad. This is bad, _bad_ , bad! What'm I supposed to do with them dead? I can't take on a Wendigo by myself, especially with these two with me! I'd have to drag these two back to town, and then what? Waste precious time rounding up other hunters for an ultimately pointless rescue mission? Go back there myself and hope both of them aren't dead yet? Try to rescue them and then kill it? That would be suicide, especially since I have no weapons!

A tear slides down my cheek as the silence continues, because I know that with each passing second, the likelihood of my brother's demise becomes a little more certain. I can't do this without them… I breathe a shaky breath, but refuse to breakdown. They'll never take me seriously if I start crying.

A couple minutes later, they come crashing through the trees back into camp. No sooner than they're safely across the protective symbols that I'm on them like white on rice.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" I shriek, standing up and giving each of them a hug before I continue. "Why the hell would you leave the circle? You knew he was dead, soon as he left! I don't need you two dead, too!" I shove Dean, the tears flowing freely now. "Do you have any idea what you just put me through?! I thought you were _dead_! I thought you two idiots went and got yourselves killed! I thought-'' I have to stop now, because I'm crying too hard to get the words out, and need to focus on taking deep, steady breaths.

Dean just kinda blinks at me. Usually, I don't cry when I get scared, or at all. Not anymore, not since I started hunting. I have to be foaming at the mouth before I'll shed a tear most of the time. He hasn't seen me cry like this in a while.

Sam, on the other hand, who hasn't been there for the past four years to see the change in my personality, gives me a hug right away. He's used to little eleven year old me who would wake him up crying because Dean and Dad weren't home yet, and how I am right now isn't that much of a leap from when I would be crying then. So he solves the situation the same way. He wraps me up in a big bear hug, and I'm enveloped in the smell of the woods and his cologne. Sam rubs my back, whispering soothing things in my ear as he rocks me gently back and forth.

"It's okay, Gwen." He whispers. "We're not dead, we got away! Didn't even have to fight the thing."

"Why would you go after him?" I sniffle, trying to steady my breathing. It's not working out too well, because my chest swells painfully with a hiccup every couple of breaths.

"Because, Gwen, we had to at least _try_ to save him." Sam said. "Even if he was being an ass about everything."

I nod, and wipe my nose on my sleeve as I step away from Sammy and try to look serious. "Don't you two _dare_ do that to me again, you got it?"

Sam and Dean nod. Dean says to Haley and Ben, who've been watching and waiting with wide eyes, "We aren't going anywhere until sunup, so we might as well get comfortable." He and Sam take off their jackets and lay them out on the ground as makeshift beds. "I'll take first watch."

Ben gratefully collapses on Dean's jacket, and is asleep within minutes. Haley, who looks a bit more shaken up than she did before, lays down next to him, but it's a while before she's asleep. Sam and I lay down on his jacket. I tucker out pretty quickly after I calm down, and I fall asleep to the sounds of the crackling fire.

I don't remember my dreams when I wake up, but whatever they were, they leave me feeling tense and shaky as I slowly drift back into consciousness. The first thing I notice is that I'm cold, which is odd because when I fell asleep I was warm, soaking in both Sam's body heat and the heat from the fire. Then I realize someone's put out the fire, and that Sam isn't behind me anymore. I sit up, rubbing my arms, and my hands come away damp. I'm covered in dew.

"Morning, Gwen." Sam said from beside an old log.

"Mornin'." I yawn, picking up Sam's jacket from the dirt and shaking it to rid it of the dirt and bugs as I walked over to him. "What's the game plan?" I hand him his jacket and sit down next to him as he pulls it on.

"We've got half a chance in the daytime." Sam says. "I'd like to kill this son of a bitch before nightfall. I don't think we're making it another night out here."

I nod, leaning my head against him, shivering a little. Dean was explaining that the supernatural was in fact real to Haley and Ben. Neither of them looked like they'd slept well. Eventually, it was time to explain to the newbies what we were hunting this time around. Sam and I stand up and walk over to where Dean, Ben, and Haley are by the tents. Sam shows Ben and Haley Dad's journal.

"This thing is a Wendigo. It's a Cree Indian word." Sam says.

"Means 'evil that devours'." I explain, "Which makes sense, given how they got the way they are."

"They all start the same. Each was once a man, maybe an Indian, or a hunter, or a miner. Something like that." Dean continues. "During a winter, they're starving, so they kill and eat any man they come across to stay alive. And if you eat enough human flesh, over the years, you become this less than human thing. You're always hungry."

"Cultures all over the world believe that eating human flesh gives you special abilities." Sam adds. "Strength, speed, immortality…"

"All of which are things that Wendigos have in spades." I finish up.

"If this thing eats humans to survive, how can Tommy still be alive?" Haley asks. Dean, Sam and I share a look. "Tell me!" Haley demands.

"You're not going to like it…" Sam warns.

"More than anything, a Wendigo knows how to last for long periods without food. It hibernates for years and years at a time." Dean explains. "But when it's awake, it keeps its victims alive. Stores them, so it can feed whenever it wants." Dean looks very uncomfortable at having to explain to these two how their brother could still possibly be alive. "If Tommy's still alive, it's keeping him somewhere dark, out of the way, and safe."

"And if we're going to kill it and save your brother, we gotta find the thing's den." I finish up for Dean.

Haley's face is full of vengeful anger. "How do we kill it?"

Dean grins. "Guns are useless. So are knives." He holds up a bottle of beer and shreds of white fabric that I'm guessing came from Roy's undershirt. "So basically, we gotta torch this sucker!"

I grin too. Always trust Dean to have a plan, and deliver it in the most Dean way possible. I swear this man gives me life.

A few minutes later, we're hiking through the woods. Dean's up front, Molotov cocktail in hand. Haley and Ben are in front of me, and I'm in front of Sam. Every few minutes, as we follow the claw marks and blood on the trees, Dean reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of M&Ms. Of course.

As we hike throughout the day, we keep seeing claw marks and blood marking the trees. At around noon, Sam jogs up to the front to Dean. As they talk, just as a look of dread descends on Dean's face, the same growling from last night echoes around us. But I can't for the life of me figure out where it's from.

"I'd suggest getting out of here!" I shout, pushing Ben in front of me to start running. Sam, Dean, and Haley are already bolting ahead when Roy's corpse falls out of a tree directly over Ben and I. I push Ben out of the way of the falling body, falling back myself to avoid being hit.

Adrenaline does wonders. I can hear my blood pounding in my ears, and I'm somehow seeing both everything and nothing in perfect clarity. I stumble over to Ben, yanking him up.

"You alright, man?" I ask him, dragging alongside me after Sam and Dean. But I stop short when I hear Haley screaming.

"Haley!" Ben screeches, yanking out of my grip and running up ahead after his sister. I follow him, fear adding a whole new layer to my adrenaline rush. I would've kept running, too, because I can't find them! But my foot catches on something, something cool and broken, and I tumble to the ground. I sit up, look down, and scream.

It was Dean's Molotov cocktail, broken and unused.

"Dean! Sam!" I scream, clambering up and screaming at the top of my lungs for them. "Where are you?" It's like last night all over again, except this time, I know they're not going to come back through the bushes A-Okay. _No_ , I think to myself as Ben rushes back to me, his face red and trying not to cry. _No, this time, I'll have to drag them back._

But I'm stumped as to how to go about it. We stay where I found the broken beer bottle, partially to give Ben a moment to collect himself, and partially because I need to clear my head and think. How are we going to find them? The Wendigo has probably taken them back to its den, so in order to find them, I need to find the den. But how can I find it, in this massively expansive forest? It'd be a waste of time and energy, especially since I have no idea where to look!

I suppose I could try calling them, but my phone isn't getting any signal, so that's out. I'm stumped. I have no idea how to proceed.

Ben interrupts my thoughts, wiping his nose on his sleeve and standing up, trying to look tough. "If it keeps its victims alive, why'd it kill Roy?"

I look up at him. "Probably because he shot at it. Bullet wounds don't hurt it, just pisses it off." Ben angrily stalks around the trees, not that I blame him. He's just lost his sister on top of his brother. He's all alone if I don't save them. Like me.

Suddenly Ben stops, and looks down at the ground by his feet. "They went this way." He says, bending over and picking something up. I walk over to him, looking over his shoulder at the thing in his hand. A yellow peanut M&M. Dean, I love you.

Ben and I follow the trail of M&Ms Dean has miraculously laid out for us, eventually coming across a mine entrance. _Very_ old. There were tons of signs all around the heavily weeded entrance warning us to keep out, danger! Just looking at it, I wasn't sure if the wooden floors would even hold our weight. Ben and I share a look, before I flick on a pocket flashlight, and lead us in.

First thing that hits me is the smell. Whoo! It smells like something's been rotting down here for a very long time. I immediately get queasy, and I have to take slow breaths through my mouth, or else I feel as if I might vomit. I force myself to use my other senses. It's hard to see with just one small pocket flashlight, but I can see piles of dirt and animal bones littering the ground. I hear the sound of water dripping somewhere off to my right, and the wooden floor boards creaking under my feet.

I hear growling from the hallway to my left in four-way junction. I immediately click off the flashlight, and pull Ben to the side of the hallway, hand over his mouth. I hold my breath, don't move a muscle. I see the shadowy Wendigo come into view, and Ben stiffens up out of fear. The Wendigo ignores us though, and moves across the junction and down another hallway. After an agonizing few minutes of waiting, I let Ben go, and silently wave him forward. We cross the intersection, but we only make it a few steps down the next hallway before the floor gives way from under us. My heart makes a leap up into my throat, and then I'm plummeting downwards, landing painfully in a heap broken wood and bones.

For a second, all the wind has been knocked out of me. I just lay there, struggling to breath, to think, to do anything. I can't even see, really, through all the splotches of color dotting my vision. But eventually, my body recovers from the shock of the impact, and I suck all the air I can into my lungs. I sit up, clutching my head as the dizziness sets in. Looking around, I see a pile of skulls meticulously placed in a corner. I feel the scream welling up in my chest, but I force it down. I can't draw the Wendigo back to us, or we'd all be dead.

I see Sam, Dean, and Haley strung up to the ceiling. I nudge Ben with my boot, and point him to Haley. He rushes over to her.

"Haley! Haley, wake up!" he whispers, shaking her gently.

I rush over to Sam and Dean. "Sam! Dean!" I whisper harshly, taking my knife out of my back pocket and straining to cut them loose. But _damn_! I'm too short. Instead, I hand the knife to Ben, who's much taller, and he cuts loose his sister before slicing the ropes suspending Sam and Dean as well.

Both of them groan as they fall to the ground. "Hey!" I say to them, slapping both of them lightly on the cheeks. "You two okay?"

Dean winces, slowly moving his arms and legs to see if they're all there. "Yeah." He says. Sam nods too, and I quickly take the knife from Ben and cut the ropes binding their arms together.

"You two sure?" I ask, fretting a bit. "I have to admit, leaving a trail of M&Ms was bloody genius!"

Dean manages to crack a smile. "Don't mention it."

"Where is he?" Sam asks.

"Gone for now." I tell him, before Haley starts crying quietly.

"Tommy…" she groans. I snap my head to look at her. A bloody, dirty man is dangling from the ceiling a ways a way. Ben and I cut him loose too, and drag him back to the group. He's breathing, so that's good at least. He opens his eyes when Haley hugs him. "Tommy, we're gonna get you home." She tells him.

While I've been reuniting Tommy with his siblings, Sam and Dean have found our supplies with all our weapons in a corner. Dean searches through them, until he pulls out three flare guns. "Think these'll work?" he asks with a boyish grin.

Sam grins and nods, shouldering the other bags. "Let's get out of here. Now." Sam says. He and I take the lead down a tunnel, Haley and Ben behind us and Dean behind them. But then, we hear growling.

"Guess who's home for supper?" Dean says sarcastically. "We ain't outrunning this son of a bitch, so we're going to have to kill it."

"How're we gonna do that?" Haley asks, blowing a piece of sweaty, dirty hair out of her face.

Dean winks. "Stay with Sam and Gwen, got it?" then he runs down the tunnel, shouting. "Come and get me you freaky son of a bitch! I taste _good_!" Sam and I wait until he's gotten a fair ways away before I move to the back, and we hurry down the tunnel again. We here growling, and Sam and I both point our guns at it. Sam motions me to move on ahead with Haley and the boys, and so I lead them tentatively down the hallway. My heart feels like it's beating a thousand beats a minute.

I hear Sam shoot his flare gun, but I know he misses because he come's running after us. I usher the three siblings ahead, praying them to go faster. We reach the end of the tunnel, but it's a dead end. Sam curses, and I gulp. Our options are either I shoot this thing and kill it, or we die. No pressure.

Sam pushes the three siblings behind him, and I stand in front of Sam so as to have a clear shot at the beast. It's taking its damn time approaching us, it knows it has us pinned. All I can hear is the blood in my ears as I pull the trigger of the flare gun the first clear shot I get. The flare embeds itself in the Wendigo's chest, and it gives me a surprised look before the flare goes off and the thing is engulfed in flames. Dean comes rushing up to us just as the thing turns into a pile of ash at my feet.

Dean smiles at me, and Sam gives me a big hug. "You did it!" he whispered in my ear.

"Let's get out of here!" Dean orders, giving me a clap on the back. We drag Tommy back out of the woods, calling 911 as soon as we get reception. As night falls, and the ambulance arrives, we give a bullshit story to the cops about this being a grizzly bear attack. As they're loading Tommy onto the ambulance, Ben and I talk for a moment.

"I really don't know how to thank you guys." He says, wrapped up in a blanket from the ambulance.

"It's a thankless job." I say theatrically. "But if you ever need any help again, you call us." I tell him firmly, giving him my number. Just before he gets into the ambulance to ride with his brother, he gives me a hug, and says,

"I hope you find your brother." Then the ambulance door closes, and he's gone.

Sam, Dean and I climb into the impala as all the cops and EMTs drive away. Sam heaves a great, big sigh and Dean says,

"Man, do I hate camping."

"Me too!" I agree, slouching in the back seat.

"Sam," Dean says with the hesitancy of not wanting to set off a ticking time bomb, "You know we're going to find Dad, right?"

Sam smiled tiredly at Dean, "I know. But in the meantime, I'm driving."

Dean grins at Sam, hands him the keys, and they switch seats. Sam drives us back to the motel, each of us basking in the feeling of a job done.


	7. The Windy City

(Hey-o! So, original adventure coming up! And this is the start of the big build up to the apocalypse and oh it makes me so happy! Yay insomnia! I'm not sure if anyone's done this idea before, but I just came up with it late one night and I'm kind of shocked at the brilliance of it! Enjoy!)

Sam drives us back to the motel, parking the impala neatly in the parking space. We all climb out, our aching bodies complaining loudly. We must've looked like quite a sight to the lady at the desk, caked in dirt and blood, decorated with bruises and bug-bites. We smiled apologetically at her before we disappeared down the hallway to our room.

"I call dibs on first shower!" I say as we step into our room, our stuff untouched from the last time we were here. Sam and Dean don't protest. I think it's because they're too tired. The two of them collapse on the bed, and loose bits of dirt fall from them onto the sheets. I sigh. A little dirt we could explain, but if they got blood on the sheets, we'd have to burn them and exchange them for the fresh sheets in the closet before we left. That's always a pain.

I look at myself in the mirror of the bathroom, and groan. Like I said, usually I'm not vain, but I can't believe that people saw me looking like this! I have a bruise forming on my right cheek from Lord knows when, dirt in my hair, on my face, little bloody scrapes… and a big bug bite under my left eye. Looking at me, if I'd told you I grew up in the woods as a feral child, you might believe me. I look as if the concept of a shower has never quite been explained to me.

And my clothes! Dear god… the purple shirt was caked in dirt and grass stains that I don't think any number of washes is going to get out, and it has minimal blood. I'm not too sad about that, it was a five-dollar flannel, I can easily replace it. What I'm not so happy about is my jeans. They were already torn to shreds to begin with, but at least they were _clean_! Clean, and could still be worn acceptably! But now, they're covered in dirt and dried blood, torn in a whole new way so that the calf of my right leg is basically only attached by a thread. They reveal the myriad of bruises that're forming on my legs. I'll have to throw these out. Damn!

Sighing, I kick off my boots, which escaped relatively unharmed, and unbutton my shirt, hanging it off the doorknob. I almost tear my jeans again as I take them off, and, irritated, I throw them on the ground in the corner. When I'm fully naked, I turn the water on and step in. I watch as the water goes from pink to brown to black, back to brown, before finally becoming clear. I suds up, wincing as the soap and the abrasive loofa come into contact with my many new scrapes. Rinsing off, I took a deep breath as I ran my fingers through my hair. This wouldn't be easy.

Overall, it took three rounds of shampoo before all the crap was out of my hair. My hair isn't even that long! How did this much dirt manage to get in there? Finally, though, I'm satisfied that all the dirt has been washed off of my skin, and I turn off the water. I step out and wrap myself in a towel, bending over to pick up my clothes before emerging into the room proper.

"Finally!" Sam cheered. "Couldn't have taken any longer, could you?"

I roll my eyes. "You saw how dirty I was. It takes time to wash all that," I gesture to his filthy self, "off. Go see for yourself!" Sam rushes into the bathroom, and groans loudly. I chuckle. He could be even more vain than Dean sometimes.

I lay in my towel on the bed that Sam and Dean didn't get dirty, suddenly feeling very drained.

"Gwen…" Dean says, sounding as tired as I feel. "Please don't make us have the talk, okay?"

I sighed melodramatically at Dean. By 'the talk', he of course meant, 'girls and boys are different, and now that you've hit puberty it makes us uncomfortable when you just lay there in a towel.'

"Dean!" I whine. "Why can't I be comfortable? You lay around in a towel for _hours_ after your shower!"

Sam's shower starts. Dean looks increasingly uncomfortable. "'S different for you."

"Why, 'cause I'm a girl?"

"No, just that… You're a very pretty young lady, and…" Dean looks like he's struggling to get the words out, so I take pity on him.

"Dean, don't worry. I get it. Delicate flower and all that bull crap." I say, motioning for him to turn around while I pull on an overly large t-shirt and sweatpants.

"Exactly." Dean said gruffly.

"Safe!" I call, flopping back onto the bed again.

"Thank you." Dean says.

I grab my teddy, a book, and snuggle under the blankets. Sam comes out of the shower a few minutes later, looking significantly cleaner. "Let's get out of here tomorrow." Sam suggests before Dean leaves to take his own shower.

Dean and I don't exactly protest, and Sam sets about cleaning the bedsheets on Sam and Dean's bed while I keep reading. By the time Dean comes out of the shadow, Sam and I have already turned down the lights and hit the hay. I'm dozing, just about to fall asleep, when Dean climbs into bed with me. Though his disturbance wakes me up a little, my body and brain are so tired that I'm asleep within minutes.

I wasn't dreaming, but this was the good kind of sleep where even though you're not dreaming, you're just relaxing in an ocean of darkness, and when you wake up you feel perfectly relaxed and happy afterwards.

Assuming you're allowed to wake up naturally.

I'm shaken awake at five in the morning, with Sam looking over me. "Wakey wakey!" he says. I pout at him, and try to pull the covers over my head. "You can sleep in the car." Sam says, dragging me out of bed. I nod sleepily, pulling a hoodie over my shirt to hide that I'm not wearing a bra, and hugging my teddy tightly to me. Like a zombie, I trudge out of the motel with Sam and climb into the backseat of the Impala, where Dean has already laid out a travel pillow and blanket. I descend back into sleep as the Impala roars to life again, but it's not as good as it was last time.

I finally wake up for good when the sun streams through the windows onto my face. I scrunch up my face and squint my eyes, sitting up and leaning back in the seat.

"Morning," I croak, rubbing my eyes.

"Finally decided to wake up, huh?" Dean says. "This one just fell asleep." I look at Sam and find him sleeping uncomfortably in the front seat.

"Poor thing. He doesn't get enough sleep." I say. "Where are we?"

"Just hit a town called Rifle." Says Dean. "We've been on the road about two and a half hours."

"Where are we headed?" I ask, swallowing to try and rid the dryness from my mouth.

"The Windy City!" says Dean. He reaches into the glove compartment, awkwardly trying not to wake Sammy, and tosses me back a travel size safe-to-swallow mouthwash. "There you go. We'll stop to get something to eat in a few hours, and you can really freshen up then."

I wondered briefly as I knocked back the mouthwash and swished, why we were going to Chicago. We usually liked to keep to smaller towns when we weren't on a case, and it's rare that we go so quickly from one case to another. My money is on Dean visiting an old fling.

Now that the mouthwash has rid my mouth of the bad taste, I settle down and amuse myself. It's gonna be a long trip to Chicago. I stick my earbuds in and listen to music, amusing myself with counting games and occasionally playing word puzzles with Dean. He's not really one to play word games, and mostly I do them with him just to see how long he makes it before he becomes grumpy because he can't figure them out. Even so, time crawls. It doesn't help that I'm checking the clock every thirty seconds. Even though it's only been three hours by the time we stop at a diner on the side of the road, it feels like it's been way longer.

"Are we even _close_?" I complain as I grab my toiletries from the trunk and shove them into the pocket of my hoodie. Out of everything about the job, I hate the driving the worst. Driving across the country can be fun, and there's lots of stuff to see, but it can be _so_ boring sometimes.

Sam chuckles. "We still have at _least_ another twelve hours, Gwen."

"More like fifteen!" Dean adds as he leads us into the diner. We take a booth close to the exit, and I quickly excuse myself to the bathroom. I splash some water on my face, brush my teeth, and spritz on some perfume and deodorant before walking back out to the boys. I take my seat opposite them in the booth.

"So why Chicago?" I ask as I take a menu out of the little rack by the window. I'm thinking of getting French toast and an orange juice.

Dean shrugs. "We just picked the name out of a hat."

I raise an eyebrow at him skeptically. "I'll buy that when hell freezes over." I tell him. "Is it a girl?"

Dean rolls his eyes. "Your lack of faith in my ability to think with the head on my shoulders is truly saddening." He says with theatricality.

"By your own fault!" I point out. "How many times have you dragged my ass across the country just so you can get some?"

Sam gives Dean a look. "Seriously dude?"

Dean tries to look regal and above it all. "It's a tough job, and I need some love and comfort!"

"More than the comfort of your own family?" I ask as the waitress comes up. I order hash browns instead of French toast, and a glass of orange juice. Dean basically orders a pile of bacon, and Sam gets a salad.

"Really though," I ask as the waitress, a short and plump old woman, waddles away with our orders, "why Chicago?"

Dean and Sam share a look, that look they used to give me when I was a kid when I asked them something that I wasn't supposed to know.

"Out with it!" I tell them, giving them the mom look, or as close as I could get to it.

Dean gives me a sly grin. "Well, we noticed yesterday that you're running low on wearable clothes."

"So we thought we'd take you shopping at one of the biggest malls in America." Sam says casually, as if he hadn't just made me one of the most excited people on Earth.

Like I said, I'm not usually vain when it comes to my appearance. We have to travel light if everything is going to fit in the car, and most of our clothes have to be dedicated to hunting. It's very hard to be vain and think I'm all that when the bags under my eyes scream how tired I am and I'm wearing a mishmash of my brother's old shirts and an old pair of jeans. I mean, I do have _some_ clothes that are meant to be worn by girls, but at this point, they're either too small, or have blood or something on them.

Growing up, Dad never really bought me clothes of my own, outside of bras and stuff that couldn't be handed down from Sam or Dean. It cost time that we didn't have and money that we couldn't scam at a rate fast enough to buy me new clothes every time I hit a growth spurt. Not that I minded. I hated Dora. Give me an AC/DC shirt over a pink Dora the Explorer shirt any day!

But I always jump at any chance to go clothes shopping. Not only because it's nice to have things to wear that fit and aren't torn, bloody, or otherwise stained, but because it makes me feel normal. Makes me feel like I could just be shopping with friends, trying on everything I can just because, and gushing over how good they make me look.

Besides, I _am_ in desperate need of new clothes.

"Really?" I ask, excitement creeping into my tone.

Sam and Dean nod, and I have to bite my wrist to keep from squealing, loudly, in public.

"You think she's excited?" Sam asks Dean, and I reach across the table to smack him.

"We're going to one of the biggest malls in the US for a shopping trip?" I ask.

Sam nods again. "For more than just clothes too! This place has a little of everything, so we can get music, a new laptop, or anything else we might conceivably need."

"Awesome!" I say. The waitress comes back with our food, and we all dig into our meals. Dean's shoveling bacon into his mouth, I'm spooning massive spoonful's of hashed potatoes into my mouth, and Sam is looking down at the two of us as he calmly eats his rabbit food.

"You'd swear you two've never eaten a decent meal in your lives!" Sam says, shaking his head.

"What do you know about decent meals?" I ask around my hash browns. "You eat like a rabbit!"

"I eat _healthy_ ," Sam corrects me.

"Yeah, but it's not filling!" Dean points out.

Sam just sighs. "Go ahead and keep eating your way closer to a heart attack."

Dean and I happily comply. Odds are, given the average lifespan of a hunter, I'll be dead before I'm thirty-five, so it's not like I'll be cutting my life short by _that_ much if I have a heart attack at thirty.

We stick around for desert, even though I'm itching to get going. I plow through my ice cream, and stare at my older brothers, trying to ignore my brain freeze. Sam takes a particularly long time with his ice cream, so much so that I'm threatening to drag him out of the diner by his hair before he finishes. Sam and Dean laugh at me as we walk back out to the Impala.

"Gwen, you kill monsters for a living. How can you be so excited about going _shopping_?" Sam asks.

"Same reason you wanted to go to Stanford." I say with a shrug as I dig out a book and my music from the trunk. "It's normal."

"Yes, but it's so…" Sam struggles to find the word. "Un-you!"

Now I laugh, as I climb into the backseat. "Un-you? Is that a word they taught you in college?"

"Shut up." Sam says. "I just didn't figure in the three or so years I've been gone that you'd change so much…"

I give him a look as we start the drive again. "You expected me at fifteen to be the same as me at twelve? That I wouldn't have matured or changed at all in the three years between?"

"No, it's not that." Sam says. "It's just, you're so different, it's kind of shocking."

I grin. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"Oh, _he_ meant it as a compliment, alright." Dean mutters. "He never had to deal with the in between years!" To Sam, he says, "You're lucky, you left right before all the gory puberty shit happened!"

"I wasn't that bad, Dean!" I protest, laughing a little. Dean's favorite thing to say to remind me of how much I owed him for taking care of me, was how he didn't kick me out after the mess of hormones and body changes that was puberty turned me into a screaming harpy seemingly at random. I always reminded him that he couldn't have kicked me out if he wanted Dad to let him live.

"'Wasn't that bad'?" Dean quotes, giving me a look in the rearview. "Oh, Sammy, it was miserable! She'd cry for no reason! She was _so_ sensitive, and she suddenly obsessed over how she looked every time she left the motel!"

"That's all normal!" I point out, but Dean continues as if I haven't spoken.

"And don't even get me started on her periods!" This is all in jest, but Sam looks a little weirded out.

"Dean, I'd really rather not have to hear about my younger sister's periods…" he says. I laugh, as Dean continues dramatically,

"And I didn't want to have to deal with it! But every month like bleeping _clockwork_ , she'd crawl into bed looking all teary, and I'd have to get her a hot water bottle and chocolate and tell her she's pretty every five minutes!"

Dean made it sound like I was getting my period just to inconvenience him. It really wasn't that bad. It was just hard going through the awkward years without another woman to help me through it. Dad sure as hell didn't care, since he was rarely there, and Dean just did what the internet told him to.

Sam puts a hand consolingly on Dean's shoulder. "You poor saint. What a terrible cross you must bear."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Well, now I must pass that cross onto you. You're gonna have to make up for lost time, buddy."

Sam doesn't look nearly as devastated as Dean thinks he ought. "Living with Jess has taught me a few things about dealing with periods." He says with a shrug.

I laugh at Dean's expression. "You make it sound like I'm still making your life miserable once a month!" I say. "I'm not nearly as bad now as I was when they first started!"

"Maybe not to you…" Dean mutters. Sam and I both roll our eyes, and the car settles into amicable silence. I open my book and begin to read.

Several hours later, we're in the home stretch. Chicago is only an hour or two away when we pull into a gas station around eleven at night. We all hop out to stretch our legs before we each start our usual tasks at a gas station. One of us fills the tank and watches the car, the other two going into the mini-mart to grab some snacks and go to the restroom. Dean and I hurry into the mini-mart first this time round, leaving Sam to fill the tank. Dean grabs us snacks, while I go to the restroom. This one's surprisingly clean, and I'm out to replace Sam in a few minutes.

I wait in the chilly night for my brothers. A luxury vehicle pulls in, and I have to do a double take. It looks odd, a luxurious car like that pulling into this dingy gas and mini-mart. I avert my eyes, looking straight ahead into the mini-mart, waiting ever so patiently for my brothers. A young man just a few years older than me steps out of the car, his pristine and lavish clothing also sticking out like a sore thumb in this place. I can see him smile at me in the corner of my eye.

"Well," he drawls, "ain't you a pretty sight in a place like this?"

I can't help but laugh out loud at this. Boy, was this guy going out of his way to be as out of place as possible.

"Have I said something funny?" he asks, looking bemused by my laughter. Several things run through my head all at once. He's probably drunk, and drunk people are very stupid. I'm all alone with this guy, and even though I'm armed and know damn well what to do with my knives, I'm hesitant to take on a man of his size. He might be around Dean's height!

"Trying to pick me up at a gas station mini mart?" I say, "Yeah, that's kind of funny. And insulting."

"Aw, how can being told your pretty be an insult?" he asks, beginning to pump gas into his tank.

"Because you're trying to pick me up at a mini-mart." I say as if it should be obvious (which it should be). "'Least do it somewhere a bit classier so you don't look like some drunk guy trying to pick up a hooker."

It occurs to me that insulting the man might not have been the smartest thing to do, but it's too late now.

To my surprise, the man laughs. "Somewhere classier as in… Chicago?" He jerks his head to the road. "If you're travelling that route, the only place you could go is Chicago. How bout I compliment you there?"

"Maybe we're travelling the opposite way." I point out. He shrugs.

"You could be leaving the Windy City, sure, but you don't sound like you're from there, and if you were just visiting and were now leaving, then leaving at ten at night seems an odd time to leave a big city." He says, and I raise my eyebrows. Alright, point one goes to the snazzy guy in an overpriced car.

"Alright, so maybe we're headed to Chicago." I say. "But that's a big city. Odds are we won't see each other ever again."

The young man puts the gas pump back in its place, and smirks. "Maybe we won't. But if we do, I'll just have to try and pick you up then!"

I laugh again, just as Sam and Dean emerge from the mini-mart. "Alright. If I see you again."

"Who was that?" Dean asks as we drive away.

I shrug. "Some random guy."

Something felt off about him though, and as we cruise towards the city, I try to pass it off as just the weirdness of the encounter, and remind myself that the odds of me running into him again are very, _very_ slim. Funny how that wasn't much comfort.


	8. The Windy City, Part 2

(A/N: So this is more original stuff, we'll be back to the actual episodes next chapter. MORE BUILDUP! I needed to get this out of the way now, or else I'd forget about it and it'd never happen. Enjoy!)

We arrive at our motel in Chicago around one in the morning. I'm not really sleepy because I napped so much in the car, but Sam and Dean didn't get much chance to nap since they were driving. As such, the two of them are effectively zombies, and I have to check us in and herd them to the room. It's almost comical how they collapse onto the bed as soon as I shut the door. I drape a blanket over the two of them and lock the door.

I sift through my clothes for something to wear to the mall in the morning, but Dean was right, I'm running low. I eventually just steal a shirt from Dean, and settle for one of my jeans that's about a size and a half too small and torn on the thighs. I take a quick shower and get dressed, try to read, but nothing holds my interest. I know it's because of that young man at the gas station, and it annoys me that he's had this effect on me even though we talked for maybe three minutes, and neither knows the other's name.

Just something about him seemed off, in a way that ticked my hunter's Spidey sense. First, the car and outfit, drawing attention to himself right away. That's not necessarily bad, maybe he's just an asshole who likes to flaunt his wealth. But then he compliments me, which just rubs me the wrong way. My initial assumption of his intoxication was clearly wrong, he was capable of both pumping gas and carrying on a conversation without slurring. He even managed to back up his assumption that I was headed to Chicago. So he wasn't drunk, he just decided to randomly hit on a girl in a gas station at eleven at night? That's just creepy.

And let's face it, I'm a Winchester. Random people coming up to talk to us usually means trouble. It's never as easy as he was just a creep trying to get laid. No, he's probably a demon or something like that. Which means a supernatural thing might be following me to Chicago. Great. Can't take one bloody day off, can we?

 _Calm down,_ I try to tell myself. _You're overreacting. He could very well just be a human trying to pick up chicks._ But no matter how much I tell myself that, I can't help the other little voice in my head, pointing out the numerous reasons why I'm not overreacting. I tell myself that I'll just have holy water and salt on me when we go shopping in the morning, and that makes me feel a little better.

I pass the next few hours restlessly pacing the room and staring out the window while Sam and Dean sleep. When five am comes around, I decide it's close enough to 'morning', and start making the morning batch of coffee. The smell eventually wakes up my brothers. Sam wakes up first, and stumbles into the bathroom. Dean wakes up a few minutes later. He ignores me for a few minutes until he's drained his cup of coffee and half of his next one.

"Morning." He says.

"Morning." I say back, drinking my coffee. Sam comes out of the bathroom and pours himself a cup.

"What time is it?" he asks as he takes a sip.

"Almost six." I tell him. Sam sighs. "Hey, you got five hours of sleep!" I point out, glibly, and he gives me a rotten look.

We sit in silence for a few moments, draining the coffee. None of us are morning people, so any early morning conversations go just about how this one's going. Once the caffeine has kicked in, Sam gets dressed, Dean showers, and then we're in the Impala, driving off to the mall. I remembered at the last moment to grab a bottle of holy water and a salt packet before we left. It's quite genius, actually, because it looks like a pepper spray, but it sprays holy water!

Once we get there, I'm struck by the bigness of it. I mean, I knew it was one of the biggest malls in America, but this is just huge…

"Where the hell do we start?" I ask as we walk into the mall with a crowd.

Dean looks awkward, because girl's shopping isn't his forte. Sam comes to his rescue. "You and I'll get all our clothes shopping out of the way, 'kay Gwen?" he says. "Dean _will_ find at least _three_ more albums for us to listen to in the car." He gives Dean a very stern look, and Dean rolls his eyes.

"Whatever you say, Sammy." Dean says, walking down one hallway.

I look up at Sam, holding my hand out for a credit card. He smirks at me.

"What, you think I'm letting you go off in this gargantuan thing by yourself?" he asks, looping his arm with me. It must've been awkward for him, since I'm so short. He leads me down the hall in the opposite direction of Dean. "'Sides, someone needs to make sure you don't buy anything to revealing."

"Sam!" I whine as we walk. "I'm a hunter, why the hell would I buy anything revealing! It's got no practical purpose!"

Sam chuckles. "You're a teenage girl before you're a hunter, Gwen."

"But I'm still a hunter!" I protest. "Wearing slutty little skirts isn't practical for chasing monsters!"

Sam leads me into a clothing store catering to teenage girls. "Either way, I'm coming with you."

I grumble as we enter the store, but I know of one way to get rid of him for sure. He'd hate to have to watch me browse the lingerie in Victoria's Secret… Not that I need any lingerie, but it's nice to just put on a sexy pair of underwear and feel confident the whole day.

Sam and I branch out in the store, and we meet up in one of the aisles with our choices. I'm shocked at how un-repulsed I am by Sam's choices. Usually, before he left, his idea of girl's fashion was pink with ruffles. Ugh. But now, he's picked out three plain shirts in blue, green, and purple, three pairs of blue jeans in my size, and two pairs of colored denim jeans. I like them. They appeal to my style, even outside of the fact that they're practical.

I almost feel bad for picking out what I did.

Out of playful spite for Sam nagging me about revealing clothes, I picked out a black mesh top to wear over a black tube top, and dark wash denim. He takes one look at it before glaring at me.

"Ha ha, very funny. I'd rather you walk out of here in that one cat woman costume you wanted to get for Halloween than you buy that outfit!" Sam says. Damn. Cat woman costume over this? That's a rare occurrence!

When I was eleven years old, just before Sammy left for Stanford, I had been left alone with him at the motel while Dad and Dean were on a hunt. We'd been bored, and Halloween was about a month away, so even though we'd never been trick or treating since Mom died, we went to the local costume store to check out some costumes. You know, pretend we're normal. Sam and I did that a lot growing up.

We didn't have the Impala to drive, so we walked on the side of the road. It wasn't that far a walk. When we walked in, Sammy took me over to the pre-teen section, even though height wise I was more of a child. Puberty had yet to flatten me with a steamroller and make me grow a foot and a half overnight, but Sam knew better than to try and show me a pink fairy costume. On the rack, costumes meant for the younger preteens were on the left, and on the right were the ones meant for the older kids. I was flicking through the different costumes, showing the cute ones to Sam. There was a teddy bear, an angel, a pirate, and a mermaid. Once we'd gone through all the ones that could conceivably fit me should I ever buy them, Sam and I walked across the aisle to the adult men's section.

But as we walked, my eye caught a costume. The logo said Cat-Woman, and I thought it looked nothing like a cat _at all_. Black skintight leather body suit, black utility belt, black knee-high boots, and cat ears. That was it. It was in the teens section, but I went to look at it anyway.

An internal discussion was going on in my head as I looked at it. Dad never lets us go trick or treating, and I knew that going into this. I knew we weren't going to get any costumes, I knew we were just here to look. But I wanted that costume. It probably wouldn't fit me, not now, maybe not ever. But I wanted it. Maybe I could convince Sam to let me get it? But why? I'd never wear it to Halloween, and there's no way I'd be allowed to wear that in public otherwise! But I wanted it.

Sam yanked the plastic bag holding the costume out of my hands. "No." he said firmly, putting it back. "No, not ever, not in a billion trillion years!"

"But Sam!" I'd whined. "Why not?"

"It wouldn't fit you, and if it did fit you, Dad would burn it." Sam said, grabbing my hand and leading me out of the store.

So the fact that he'd prefer that costume to this is a testament to just how sexy the outfit would be. Sam gives me a look. "Put that back. Find an appropriate outfit."

I roll my eyes. "You're no fun sometimes, Sammy!" I put back the mesh top and the tube top, but keep the dark wash. I browse the store, coming back to Sam with a black crop top with a Pikachu on the chest, and a flowy white shirt. He sighs, but approves both shirts.

"I swear, Gwen, this is why we can't do nice things!" Sam says with a resigned sigh as we check out.

"Oh, yes, because I joke around, we can't go shopping!" I say with dramatic horror in my voice. Sam elbows me in the ribs.

"C'mon. We've got a lot of stores to hit." He says. He moves to give me the bags, but thinks better of it, and just leads me through the mall to the next store.

An hour and a half later, my arms and Sam's are laden with bags full of clothes. Shopping for Sam and Dean was easy, they just needed simple button downs, undershirts, and jeans. Shopping for me was a bit more difficult. Because of my short stature, it was hard to find clothes that fit me height wise as well as not looking like cotton candy barfed all over them. Sam and I did manage to find enough clothes for me that I could finally burn my old wardrobe, and with our arms losing circulation thanks to the heavy bags' straps digging into our skin, we rushed to meet Dean at the food court.

We find him stuffing his pie hole with burgers and fries. He looks up at us impassively. "That must've cost a small fortune." He says.

I roll my eyes. "Big whoop, not like we're actually paying for it!"

Dean rolls his eyes right back at me, before tossing me a card. "If you need girly stuff, go get it. I'm not stopping at the next Target we come across to get you bras that'll last maybe a month, tops." I grin at him.

"Thanks Dean!" I say before happily skipping through the mall to the Victoria's Secret that I had seen earlier while shopping with Sam. I grab a few pairs of underwear and some new bras, and then I'm out. Normally I would be remised to buy such lovely bras given my profession, but Victoria's Secret bras are pretty much designed to be torn, if you know what I mean. They'll last a lot longer than other brands.

As I'm walking back to the food court, I see a candy shop advertising the best chocolate covered strawberries in the state. I simply can't refuse chocolate covered strawberries, it's against my nature. I whip out my phone and text Sam, telling him I'll be at the sweet's shop. Then I'm inside the candy shop, oohing as I look over the wide variety of calorie/cavity bombs that they have available for me. I've always had the biggest sweet tooth in my family, except possibly when it came to pie.

From the front of the shop, where they have all the freshly baked stuff, I order a half pound of pralines, a box of various fudges, and a caramel apple. I munch on the caramel apple as I browse the rest of the shop, where they have different candy bars and other smaller candies. I grab a bag of marshmallows and Hershey's Kisses, Smarties, candy corn, and cotton candy. I'll have no teeth left by the time I'm done, but I'll have no regrets!

It's as I've just finished checking out that I see him. I see him through the glass windows of the store, and I'm sure it's him. It has to be! Same flashy outfit, same smug look on his face…

All my fears from this morning immediately come back. He's a demon come to attack me! I hurry out of the candy shop, ducking my head low and hoping he won't notice me, but I know he does. I can feel his eyes on me, and I could swear I could feel him smirking. I walk at a brisk pace down the hall, wondering what on Earth I could do with literal hell spawn on my tail.

I didn't have my weapons on me – this was _supposed_ to be a day off! What can I do?

After my brief moment of panic, a sense of calm comes over me. First, I need to find out if he actually is a demon. I decide on the Lord's name in Latin. Holy water will be for my escape. And that's only if he approaches me. As I get closer and closer to the food court, I begin to think that maybe I am just overreacting. Maybe I was just paranoid and it wasn't him at all that I saw.

But then I felt a tap on my shoulder.

"Cristo!" I say in surprise, whirling around to see who it was. It was him, and surprisingly, his eyes weren't black. They were blue-green.

"Cristo?" He asks, smiling.

I blush. _So_ overreacting. "Yeah, it's Christ in Latin. You startled me."

He grinned and says, "So when you're startled you curse in Latin?"

I roll my eyes at his teasing expression. "It's a very colorful language." I say, "English doesn't quite have the breadth of creative cursing that Latin, Italian, or Spanish does."

"Oh, really?" he says, smirking. "Hope you don't curse too often. Such pretty lips shouldn't be marred by bad words!"

I give him a look. "Seriously?"

He raised his hands in mock surrender. "Hey, we agreed that if we met again, I could try and pick you up!" He winked and said, "I'd argue a mall is much better than a gas station for that!"

I smile sweetly. "We said you could try. I never said you'd succeed!" And with that, I blow him a kiss, twirling on my toes and walking away.

"Aw, hey, hey, hey!" he says as he catches up to me, walking backwards in front of me. "You didn't even give me a chance!"

"Au contraire!" I exclaim, grinning. "I gave you a chance! It's not my fault you blew it!"

"How did I blow it, exactly?" he asks. I paused to think, a playful expression on my face, but before I could respond he butts back in. "I didn't blow it! I knew it! You're just playing hard to get!"

I scoff. "Please."

"You think you can resist me long enough to _play_ hard to get?" he asks, his tone suggesting humor, but his overall demeanor saying that he actually didn't think I could resist him.

"You think you can even get me to begin with?" I quip back. We're approaching the food court, and I can see Sam and Dean sitting at a table, munching on Philly cheese steaks. I both hope and don't hope that one of them sees me. One the one hand, I want this man off my back, because besides how much I'm enjoying the banter, this whole thing still kind of does rub me wrong. On the other, if they come to my rescue, we'll never go shopping again.

"I think the odds are definitely in my favor." He says with a smug grin on his face. "No lady can resist me!"

I roll my eyes. "Lucky me, I'm not a lady." We're going to pass the food court if we keep going, so I try my best to get out of there. "Listen, man, this's been nice, but I gotta go."

He looks over to the food court. "Hungry, huh? Want me to buy you something?"

I narrow my eyes. "No thanks, I'm perfectly capable of paying for my own meal."

He smiles. "I know you are, but what sort of gentleman would I be if –"

"What sort of gentleman buys the apple of his eye McDonalds?" I ask, grinning.

He didn't know how to recover from that one right away. His face fell a bit, he looked to be resisting laughter, and he has to force his face back into a smug look before he can continue, although it pales in comparison to the original.

"A gentleman has to change with the times." He says, and I have to hide my grin. He's so obviously been thrown off his mark.

"I'm sure he does." I say. "But I really do have to go. It was nice seeing you again." That was really more of a social nicety than fact, but who cares? I give him a final smile before hurrying over to my brothers.

"Who was that?" asks Sam.

"We were just about to go over and find out." Dean adds.

"That was the guy from the gas station." I tell them.

"Same dude?" Sam asks. "Weird."

"Too weird." Dean agrees. "Is he a demon?"

I shake my head. "He didn't respond to the Lord's name in Latin. He's no demon."

"Then what is he?" Dean asks.

"He _could_ be human." Sam suggests. Dean and I give him a look, and he shrugs. "It's possible!"

"Not with us, Sammy, you know that." Dean says. "Normal humans don't talk to us randomly."

"Well, if we see him again, we'll know he's not a regular human." I say. "He didn't send off any particularly supernatural vibes, so I'm willing to let this slide as a freak coincidence."

Dean agreed, more out of not knowing what else to do than out of agreeing with my sentiments. But he did make us end out shopping excursion early, promising a big dinner later as we left the mall.

As I climb into the backseat of the Impala, I see him again. Leaning against his flashy car, not even looking at me, but just the sight of him set me on edge. He wasn't likely human, he wasn't demon, so what did that leave? A lot of equally scary possibilities. I don't like where this is going.

(A/N: Alright, so I have a question for you guys. I'm a junior in college, so I don't have nearly as much time as I'd like to work on this story and give you the longer chapters I've been giving. Would you guys like shorter updates more frequently, or longer ones that take a bit more time? Thanks! Comments and critiques are welcome!)


	9. Dead in the Water 1

I am _so_ not in the mood for this. It was at least a three hour drive from Chicago to Wisconsin, which is better than our normal time spent in the car, but this was made even worse by Dean and Sam's constant bickering. Over Sam not sleeping, over the guy from Chicago who wasn't a demon but was something else that we didn't know, over taking another brief reprieve from the job… And I couldn't turn my music up loud enough!

Now we're sitting in a diner. I'm hunched over the table and glaring at the two of them. Our waitress comes over. Her name is Wendy. She takes one look at me and shouts over her shoulder,

"Hey, Ronnie, how's about a fresh pot of coffee?" she turns back to us and says, "On the house. She looks like she needs it." I smile at her gratefully.

"Thank you!" Dean says with that special smile of his. Lady killer.

"What can I get you?" Wendy asks.

Sam orders a salad for breakfast. I swear he's a horse. I order a mushroom omelet, and Dean orders bacon and eggs, flirting with the waitress all the while. Sam sighs and gives Dean a look as Wendy walks away. Dean ignores him as he gets out a newspaper and a pen.

"Please don't fight." I beg.

"We're not fighting!" Dean says.

"We haven't said a word!" Sam agrees, holding his hands up.

I roll my eyes. "I don't have caffeine in my system yet. I can't deal with this."

Dean raises an eyebrow as he circles an obit. "Deal with what?"

"You." I say. "You're flirting with the waitress, Sam's sighing a deep sigh of disapproval and you two are just going to go on and on at each other!"

Sam covered his hand with his mouth to hide his grin. "You do need caffeine." He says.

"Don't you dare laugh at me." I threaten. Sam just smiled as the waitress comes back with a steaming pot of coffee and fills our mugs.

"There you go dears." She says. "Your food will be right out."

"Thank you." Dean says.

We pass the time in idle conversation. Dean circles obituaries, Sam and I banter back and forth as the coffee slowly wakes me up. We only pause for breath when the food arrives.

"These are all _possible_ cases," Dean says around his bacon, "but not at all convincing." He folds and puts down the newspaper so he can shovel eggs into his mouth. I cut up my omlete and spear a piece on my fork as I take the newspaper and begin to look through it myself. I saw patterns that Dean didn't. He tended to look for freak accidents, I usually looked for a similarity in causes of death. Of course, you had to make exceptions for the old people, but it's usually pretty rare for, say, five people in the same small town to die of heart attacks within the same obit section.

We finish our meal in silence. Sam gets up to use the restroom, and Wendy comes up to us just as I've circled the name Sophie Carlton. A young woman, healthy as a horse, who just drowned, third one this year in the same lake. See? Patterns.

"Can I get you anything else?" Wendy asks. I look over at Dean, wondering what trick he'll use to get her number this time. He bites his pen, and is just about to speak when Sam comes back. He takes one look at Dean and the waitress, and shakes his head.

"Check, please." He says as he sits back down.

The waitress smiles at him. "Sure thing, hon." She grabs our plates and walks away to grab the check. Dean glares playfully at Sam.

"Sam, I get that you're real keen on finding Dad," Dean says, "but we're allowed to have fun. And that?" he points to the waitress, who's wearing cute short shorts under her apron. "That's fun!"

Sam rolls his eyes, but before he can reply and start another argument, I slap both of them with the newspaper.

"In case you boys forgot, we're here to work!" I spread the newspaper out in front of them. "I think I've got one. Her name's Sophie Carlton. She drowned in Lake Manitoc in Wisconsin. Three problems though. First, she was a varsity swimmer according to her obit, so the odds of her just drowning are kind of slim. Second, they dragged the water, and they didn't find squat. No body. And then, she's the third person to drown in that lake this year. They didn't find bodies for the other two, either."

Dean reads over the obituary. "Says they had a funeral a few days ago. They buried an empty coffin?"

I nod. "For closure or something like that."

Sam scoffs. "Closure? What closure? People don't just disappear, other people just stop looking for them!"

I roll my eyes as Dean shakes his head at Sam. "Something you wanna tell me, Sammy?"

"The trail for Dad!" Sam says. "It's getting colder every day!"

"Exactly," Dean says, "So what do you expect me to do?"

"I don't know!" Sam says. "Something. Anything!"

Uh oh. Dean gets that look on his face, like he's about to beat some serious monster ass.

"You know what, Sam? I'm sick of this attitude! You think Gwen and I don't want to find Dad as much as you do?"

"Yeah, I know you do, it's just that-''

Dean slams his hand down on the table. " _We_ _'re_ the ones who've been with him every single freaking day for the past three years, while you've been going to pep rallies up at college! We _will_ find Dad, but until we do, we're going to kill everything bad between here and there! Got it?"

Sam leans back, crosses his arms, and rolls his eyes. Dean is distracted again by Wendy, and we sit in awkward silence for a few moments until the check had been paid.

"So Lake Manitoc." Sam says. "How far?"

Dean smiled and I just rolled my eyes. However long it was, with my mood, it would take ten times longer. It didn't help that the argument in the diner left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. The ride was awkward and tense.

When we finally make it, we settle into our usual routine. Find a motel, drop me off, Sam and Dean go impersonate federal agents.

"Why can't I go with you, and we can _not_ pretend to be federal agents that magically decided to descend from on high to investigate a death in the middle of Bum-fuck, Egypt?" I complain as we pull into the motel.

"It's a small town, Gwen." Sam points out. "We can't just show up and pretend to be friends of the dead girl. Besides, pretending to be government agents gives us the authority to ask all the weird questions we need to."

"It's not our fault you're short!" Dean teases, patting my head condescendingly. I swat his hand away and scowl.

"Yes, it is!" I snap. "You two stole all the tall genes! Especially you, Sammy!" Sam just grins and opens the door for me.

"Maybe when puberty finally kicks in you'll grow." He says. "Oh wait, it already has!"

I shove him. "What am I even supposed to do? You two get to do all the interesting detective stuff!"

"Just get us a room, Gwen." Dean says. "And 'sides, you know that interesting equals dangerous in our line of work. Forgive us for wanting to protect you."

"I'm fifteen, Dean, not six." I say, grabbing my bag from the trunk. "And I know my way around a knife and gun better than just about any girl my age. I think I can handle the interesting detective work."

"Doesn't change the fact that you're too young to be taken seriously." Dean says. "Now go check in and try not to get killed."

"Can't we just say I'm an understudy or something?" I ask, desperate to actually be able to _do_ something. Dad never let me do anything, and I don't want history to repeat itself with Dean!

Sam and Dean share a look, and I can tell they're doing that telepathic big brother communication. I wait anxiously for their verdict.

"Go get us a room." Dean finally said, and my face fell. "And then you can come back. We'll say you're an intern, and we'll pray to whatever God is up there that they buy it."

I fist pump the air. "Yes!" I cheer, slamming the trunk closed and rushing back to the front to give Dean a hug.

"Don't thank me yet!" Dean says gruffly. "If it doesn't work, it's never happening again!"

I don't care though. I hug him tightly, before grabbing the card and skipping into the motel. I _finally_ get to actually get involved in the nitty gritty of hunting! No more waiting in the motel rooms, or in the car, just hoping that there's some fluke that lets me take part in the take down, like our last couple hunts.

I get us our motel room, and, admittedly, I probably looked dementedly happy to the guy at the desk. He hands me the key, and I can see him restraining himself from warning me about the dangers of drugs. I drop off our bags in the room before heading back out to the boys.

"Now, do we change into suits or something?" I ask excitedly. Sam shakes his head.

"No," he says, "we're going as Wildlife agents. Makes the most sense. We won't need to dress all fancy for this one."

"Alright!" I say, climbing into the front seat, squeezed between Dean and Sam. "Let's get going!"

"You're way too excited about this." Dean says gruffly as he shakes his head, sticking the keys in the ignition.

"You just don't want me to have any of the fun you have." I say.

Dean shares a look with Sam. "Gwen, if you ever have half the fun I've had, my soul will be damned to hell for all eternity."

I roll my eyes. "Come on, Dean. Did you really expect to be able to keep me locked up in a motel room until I was eighty three?"

Dean shrugs as we pull out of the motel parking lot. "I had hopes."

"And now they are dashed!" I tease.

"Not yet they're not…" Dean mutters. I kick my feet up on the dash, leaning back and giving Dean a smug look. Dean swats my feet off the dash, grumbling to himself.

We drive through the countryside, passing the occasional house, in silence. For me, it's a happy one, but for my brothers - especially Dean - it's more tense and dreaded. I can kinda see where they're coming from. If the family doesn't buy me as an understudy, that could blow our whole gig. Trying to find out information as presumed cons caught posing as a federal agent is considerably harder then finding out information as fake-feds, or even as an average joe citizen. But still, I'm far too excited at the prospect of being allowed in on the hunts to be worried about someone not buying me as a trainee federal agent.

We pull up in front of a nondescript house. It didn't look well taken care of. The paint is peeling and there's rust on the gutters. It's in front of a lake that stretched out behind the house. That's presumably where Sophie Carlton had drowned. Sam, Dean and I walk up the cracked and weedy paved sidewalk to the front door. Dean turns to give me a stern look.

"Listen here, Gwen. You let us two do the talking. Got it?" he says. "You do not speak unless spoken to. Less attention drawn to you the better."

"Sir, yes sir!" I answer, saluting him and rolling my eyes. Now Dean was just being overly cautious. But still… Anything to let him keep me in the hunt. Dean knocks on the door. A pudgy young man answers the door. He looks nothing like his sister's picture in the obituary. Aside from being much chubbier than his sister would've been, his hair color was much darker, and his eyes were brown instead of the light color of his sister's eyes. He also looks to be older than she was. If I'm remembering her obituary correctly, her brother's name was Will.

"Will Carlton?" Dean asks, looking Will up and down.

"That's me." Will says, straightening up. "Who's asking?"

Sam and Dean take out their fake IDs to show him. "I'm Agent Ford," Dean says, "and this is Agent Hamill, and our intern, Hannah. We're with the US Wildlife Service."

Will looks at our IDs curiously, before looking at Dean. "Are you here about Sophie? What would Wildlife Service want to know about an accidental drowning?"

"We don't think it's an accident." Sam said. "We'd like to see the lake and ask you a few questions if you don't mind."

Will gave us each a long look before nodding. "I'll take you out back." he said, stepping outside onto the pavement with us. He leads us around the house and down a path to the lake. There's a dock jutting out into the lake, and an older man is sitting on a bench on the dock, staring out at the lake.

"That's my dad." Will says. "He's really shook up by it."

"Can you tell us how it happened?" Sam asks gently.

Will clears his throat and blinks a few times. I can see him trying to force back tears. "Yeah." he says in a choked voice. "She was about a hundred yards out when she got dragged down."

"She didn't just drown?" Dean asks.

Will shakes his head. "She was a varsity swimmer. Practically grew up in that lake. She's as safe out there as she would've been in her own bathtub."

"So there wasn't any splashing, or other signs of distress?" Sam asks.

Will shakes his head again. "No, that's what I'm telling you!"

"Did you see any shadows in the water?" Sam asks. "Maybe some dark shape breach the surface?"

"No." Will said. "But again, she was pretty far out there."

"You ever see anything strange on the shoreline?" Dean asks. "Tracks that you didn't recognize, things like that?"

Will looks a little confused. "No, never. Why? What do you think is out there?"

"We'll let you know as soon as we do." Dean says. "I think that'll be all for now. Thank you for your time." he turns around and begins walking for the car, but Sam stops him.

"What about your father?" Sam asks, looking at the older man on the dock. Will looks too, and the pain is evident on his face.

"Look, if you don't mind…" Will says, "he didn't see anything, and he's been through a lot."

"We understand." Sam said. "Thanks a lot." Sam turns around and walks with Dean back to the impala. I follow them as quickly as I can, muttering a 'condolences' under my breath as I pass Will. I climb into the impala with Sam and Dean.

"What do you think, Gwen?" Dean asks as he starts up the car.

"I think it's pretty clear it wasn't an accident." I say. "How could it be? A varsity swimmer just up and drowns, and no body can be found?"

"What should we do next then?" Sam asks.

"Talk to the sheriff." I answer promptly. "See what his explanation is for three people drowning and no bodies being found."

"Good girl!" Dean says, pulling out onto the road and beginning the drive back to the main part of town. "Let's get started!"

I grin out the window, pleased that it went so well and that I seem to have passed their little quiz. I can only hope it goes so well with the sheriff. From what I've gleaned from years of watching from the sidelines, local police officers rarely if ever like federal agents sticking our noses into their business.

And it turns out this sheriff is no different. He's much more suspicious of our cover story than Will was, especially of me. But he leads us back into his office to talk, nevertheless.

"Now, forgive me for asking, but why does Wildlife Services care about an accidental drowning?" the sheriff asks.

"Are you so sure it was accidental?" Sam asks. "A varsity swimmer isn't likely to drown on her own, and even if she did, there'd at least be a body. Your report said you didn't find one. Or the bodies of the other two drowning victims."

The sheriff motions for us to sit at the chairs around his desk. I sit down in one chair, and Dean in the other. Sam stands behind Dean. "Well I don't see what else it could be, since there's no carnivores in that lake, and certainly nothing big enough to pull a person down!"

"Will Carlton says he saw something pull his sister down." Dean says. The sheriff waves that comment off.

"Will Carlton is traumatized, and grief plays tricks on the mind. Still, we dragged that entire lake. Nothing. We even ran a sonar sweep. Nothing." he says as he sits down and shuffles papers on his desk.

"Don't you think it's a bit odd, though?" I ask, ignoring the glares sent my way by Dean and Sam. "This makes the third body to go missing in that lake."

The sheriff looks at me with a piercing gaze, the kind that makes me want to shrivel up and try to look non-threatening. A predatory gaze. "I know that." the sheriff says. "These are people from my town, people that I care about!" he takes a deep breath and lets it out in a tired sigh. "Anyway… This won't be a problem much longer."

"Why's that?" Dean asks.

The sheriff's eyes light up with interest. "The dam. It's falling apart. And the feds - that's you - won't give us the grant to repair it. So they've opened the spillway. In six months, both the lake and most of the town will be gone." he gave us a smile that was both knowing and condescending. "But as Federal Wildlife, you already knew that."

Dean coughs, and Sam smiles right back at the sheriff. "Exactly." Sam says.

There's a knock at the door, and a very pretty young woman and a young boy who I'm assuming is her son are at the doorway. Dean stands up.

"Sorry." the young woman says with a small smile. "Am I interrupting? I can come back later."

"No, darling, it's alright." the sheriff says. "Gentleman, miss, this is my daughter."

Sam smiles at her, and Dean gives her a grin and offers his hand to shake. "Pleasure. I'm Dean."

The woman smiles coyly at Dean and shakes his hand. "I'm Andrea Barr. And this is my son, Lucas." Dean waves at the little boy, but he ignores Dean and walks away to the table at the other end of the room, set up with coloring supplies.

"These people are from Wildlife Service." the sheriff says. "They're here about the lake."

"Oh." Andrea says. "I hope you can figure out what's happening and stop it." she drifts away to sit with her son.

"Is he okay?" Sam asks the sheriff, looking at Lucas.

"He's been through a lot." the sheriff says. "We all have." he stands, signaling the end of the meeting. "If there's anything else I can do for you, just let me know."

Dean and I stand as well. "Now that you mention it," Dean says as he, Sam and I walk to the door, "could you point us towards a motel?" Sam and I both look at him knowingly. We already checked into the motel, and he knows damn well where it is. He was just looking for any way to talk to Andrea. Christ, he was hopeless.

The sheriff smiles. "Wildlife doesn't have a fund for hotels for their agents?" he asks.

"Dad." Andrea scolds lightly. She addresses us, "Lakefront Motel. About two blocks south of here."

"Two?" Dean echoes. "Would you mind showing us?" he smiles at Andrea, shamelessly flirty. I have to resist the urge to groan and face-palm.

Andrea laughs. "You want me to walk you two blocks?" she asks.

"Not if it's any trouble." Dean says. Shameless, that man.

Andrea makes an effort to quiet her giggles. "I'm headed that way anyway." she says. "I'll be back to pick Lucas up at three, okay Dad?" she ruffles Lucas's hair. "We'll go to the park."

Sam thanks the sheriff again as Dean follows Andrea out the door. I shake my head and share a look with Sam. Sam seems surprised that Dean hasn't gotten any better in the years since he's been gone. Dean is attempting, and mostly failing, to flirt with Andrea. She ignores most of his passes until we reach the hotel.

"There, see? Two blocks, just like I said." Andrea said, before smirking at Dean. "It must be so hard, with your sense of direction, to never be able to find your way to a decent pick up line!" she waves and walks back the way we came. "Enjoy your stay!" she calls.

When she's out of earshot, I burst into laughter. "That was an epic fail, man. So epic that it should make the Guinness."

Sam is laughing too. "Kids are the best? Seriously? You don't even _like_ kids!"

"I love kids!" Dean protests, almost sounding offended.

"Name three children that you even know." Sam says. Dean looks like he's about to say something, but Sam cuts him off. "Gwen and I don't count." Dean closes his mouth and continues thinking. I scoff and walk into the hotel.

"You're hopeless, Dean!" I call.

"I'm thinking!" he calls back.

Sam and I walk to our motel room and rush to claim a bed. I'm pooped, so I snuggle into a little ball under the covers, shivering. Sam is much more work-oriented than me, however, so he just sets up his laptop and gets to work researching. What he's researching, I don't know, since I don't really think we have that much to go on. But if his little college educated mind thinks it has a lead, by all means let it follow it up.

I lay in the bed staring at the ceiling until Dean comes in, lugging our bags. "Did you think of any?" I ask him. He glares at me.

"Shut up." he says, tossing my teddybear at me. I grab him and hold him under the covers. Dean starts going through his clothes, separating the dirty from the clean. We stay like that for a while, me laying in bed dozing, Sam working on his laptop, Dean going through our things. This is our downtime. And so far, I'm enjoying it.

Eventually, I sit up and look over at Sam. He's got this look of total concentration on his face. Now I know why he did so well in college. He must've been a whiz at writing papers.

"What you got, Sammy?" I ask him, climbing out of bed and going over to look at his screen.

"A pattern." Sam says. "So there's the three drowning victims this year, right?"

"Any before that?" Dean asks, putting down the shirt he was attempting to fold so he can pay attention to Sam.

"Yeah." Sam says. "A few." he highlights the headline of the article he's reading online. It's the online version of the _Lake Manitoc Tribune_. The headline he's highlighted reads, "Drowning Taints Ice Fishing Festival". He clicks on a new tab, and another headline comes up, this one reading, "Twelve Year Old Girl Drowns in Lake, Second Drowning in six Months at Lake Manitoc".

"Six more drownings spread out over the last thirty five years." Sam says. "None of those bodies were ever recovered either. Whatever's out there, this thing is picking up its pace!"

Dean starts pacing. "So, we've got a monster on a binge?"

"That's what it seems like to me." I say. "But something about this whole lake monster theory isn't sitting right with me."

"What?" Dean asks, shooting me a sarcastic grin, "You don't believe in the Loch Ness Monster?"

"That's exactly what's bugging me about this, too." Sam says. "With the Loch Ness Monster, there's hundreds of hundreds of eye witness accounts stretching back for hundreds of years. Here, there's none of that. This started thirty five years ago, and there wasn't a single mention of anything before that." Sam looks at the picture of the twelve year old girl who drowned. "Whatever this is, no one is living to tell the tale."

And on that bright and cheerful note, the conversation ended. Dean went back to folding clothes, and Sam went back to looking through news articles. I look over Sam's shoulder, pondering the case. All signs pointed to supernatural, but _what_ supernatural thing are we dealing with? I'm having a hard time thinking of any monsters that lived underwater, but what else could this be?

It's just as I'm coming out of this line of thought that a name on Sammy's screen catches my eye. "Wait," I say to Sam, pointing at the name on the screen. "Christopher Barr. Barr. Where've I heard that name before?"

"Andrea's last name was Barr." Dean says.

"Of course you'd remember that." I roll my eyes.

"Hey, it turned out to be helpful!" Dean points out.

"We'll see." I say.

"Nope, Dean's right." Sam says, bringing up an article that reads, "Local Man Dies in Tragic Accident". "Christopher Barr was the drowning victim in May. He was Andrea's husband, and Lucas's father."

I wince. "No wonder Andrea wasn't interested, Dean, she's a widow!"

"I didn't know!" Dean protests.

Sam continues reading. "Apparently he took Lucas out swimming. Lucas was on a floating wooden platform when his father drowned. It was two hours before he was rescued."

"Poor kid…" I say quietly, my heart aching for the little boy who watched his father die.

"No wonder the kid was so freaked out." Dean says. "Watching one of your parents die isn't something you just get over."

Sam clicks on the picture of Lucas. His sad, mournful and dead eyes look into the camera. "Maybe we have an eye witness after all." Sam says.

"We can't do that to him!" I say. "The poor boy is scared enough as is! And besides, he won't talk!"

Dean coughs. "Well, I have a way with children. I'll see if I can talk to him."

"You?" I repeat. " _You_ have a way with children? In what universe?"

"This one." Dean says. "You'll remember that I took care of both of you growing up. And I didn't do a bad job of it, either, because one of you went to college!"

Sam rolls his eyes. "Fine. We'll see if you can get him to talk to us. His mother said they'd be at the park around three. We'll go see him then."

(Alright you beautiful people! It's been a while since I uploaded a new chapter, huh? But I'm back! I hope you all had a happy new year and a wonderful holiday season! Comments and critiques are wanted and appreciated! Tell me what you think of Gwen? I'm worried about her being a bit too... Perfect. And about having to adjust parts of the story to accomidate her. Thoughts?)


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